Milk Consumption and Public Health: The Reorganization of São Paulo's Milk Supply System and Its Critics, 1930s–40s

Already during the 1890s in many urban centers all over the world the hygienic quality of cow`s milk became a major public health issue, given the wide spread use of it as baby food together with the assumption that its properties as a perfect vector for infectious diseases was a key cause of the high rates of infant mortality at the time. São Paulo, the rapidly expanding city in the south-east of Brazil, was no exception to this rule, although serious state action with regard to the improvement of the city`s milk supply system did not take place until the late 1920s. And even then, state authorities did not succeed easily in providing the city`s population with safe milk. With the appointment of the physician Ademar de Barros as state interventor of São Paulo in 1938 the definite measure adopted in order to solve São Paulo`s “milk problem” was compulsory pasteurization. Within the wider context of nutrition policies of the first Vargas era (1930-1945), the paper examines the state authority`s struggle to improve the quality of São Paulo`s milk supply as well as its consequences on the structure of the dairy industry, the milk market and milk consumption in general. Drawing from archival sources, newspapers, medical and agricultural journals, this work highlights the dilemma existing between food safety and low consumer prices, the two basic goals of the Estado Novo`s nutrition policies.