Missing Microbes and Other Gendered Microbiopolitics in Bovine Fermentation

Abstract

Dairy science’s focus on the rumen’s fermenting role in converting plant-based foods into energy and protein for milk production highlights industrial agriculture’s interest in bovine bodies as commodity producers. Attention to cows’ productive labor has meant not only a rise in on-farm practices that ignore their reproductive labor but, as important, that of the gendered bovine milk microbiota writ large. Analyzing the microbiopolitics of such forms of industrial fermentation, I explore first the effects of “missing microbes” in, for example, the devaluing of microbial cross talk between bovine mother and offspring microbiota; second, the rise of new biotechnologies to treat this loss, such as Chinese scientists placing human breast milk components in transgenic cows; and finally, the cultivation of bacteriotherapeutic agents to solve problems like the overuse of antibiotics generated by this loss. Focusing on the rapid industrialization in China and the global dairy industry, in this paper I query the dynamics between heritage microbial relations and new biotechnologics.