Contemporary industrial meat agriculture requires the intensive governance of animal reproduction through technologies such as artificial insemination. As humans are intimately entwined with animals, it becomes difficult to distinguish animal husbandry from sex with animals. At this boundary, how might agriculture and reproduction be understood together to shed light on the shared fate of humans and animals? To address this question, Purebred: Making Meat and Eugenics in the Modern United States details the complex interface of sex and agriculture. It contends that the managed reproduction of animals and humans has been the vital circuitry for biocapital accumulation. Purebred is a history of meat agriculture that foregrounds reproductive governance as a crucial strategy of wealth accumulation and as a model for the large-scale management of life. The project examines the technologies of livestock breeding, and argues that those very technologies came eventually to govern human reproduction.
A 1929 poster from the North Carolina Extension Service showing how livestock breeding should inform human health education. North Carolina University Digital Collection
