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TIL about "Swill milk" where cows were fed distillery waste causing cow teeth rot and disease. It was also adulterated with raw eggs, burn sugar, etc. Swill milk lead to over 8,000 infant's deaths (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 8 months ago by usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml to c/todayilearned@lemmy.ml

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[–] livus@kbin.social 28 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yikes, that's disgusting on so many levels, from the animal torture to the poisoning babies to the evil politician who tried to cover it up.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Tbf, I've read the wiki article and couldn't see any consequences for those doing this. It remained legal, no one was punished, they even succeeded in cleaning the image of milk so… it seems that the evil politician succeeded?

[–] livus@kbin.social 2 points 8 months ago

Yes, they got away with it. It remained legal for another 4 years, but the investigative journalism reached so many people that the public eventually won some laws:

The Board of Health exonerated the distillers, but public outcry led to the passage of the first food safety laws in the form of milk regulations in 1862.