Sold as Cheap "Pure" Milk to the Working Class

Описание: This video explores the Swill Milk Scandal of 1850s New York City, when dairy cows were kept in squalid urban stables beside whiskey distilleries and fed on fermenting grain waste. The milk they produced was thin, bluish, and nearly worthless, so producers diluted it further, mixed in chalk and other additives, and sold it as cheap “pure” milk to working-class families. Using contemporary newspaper accounts, medical reports, and reformers’ writings, the story traces how this toxic, nutrient-poor milk quietly poisoned thousands of infants while appearing to be an ordinary household staple.

Set against the backdrop of rapid industrialization, overcrowded tenements, and a largely unregulated food market, the documentary follows the investigations that exposed the swill milk trade, the public outrage that followed, and the early public health reforms it helped inspire. Along the way, it looks at the roles of journalists, doctors, politicians, and dairy owners in shaping one of the first major food safety debates in American history, and shows how this forgotten scandal changed the way cities thought about milk, regulation, and the protection of children.