Milk Wars (2018)
Written by Steve Orlando & Gerard Way
Artwork by ACO & Hugo Petrus
Colors by Tamra Bonvillain & Marissa Louise
Chef’s Note: I am of the age that I actually remember milk getting delivered in glass bottles, right to our back door. It was quite commonplace in our neighborhood.
Commonplace, but still also a bit magical: one would put empty bottles in the box at night and presto – full bottles would appear in the morning. And too: the milkman was a somewhat mysterious figure. You might hear him, but only rarely might you actually see him. One had to plan to be up before sunrise for such a chance.
Luckily, though, he was not Milkman Man, who seems a tad overly zealous in administering his homogenizing wares.
Milk has not always held the central place on the American table, however. In fact, until the early 1800s, most milk peddled by milkmaids through city streets was buttermilk, a byproduct of the on-farm buttermaking industry. But it was not a common beverage, and most buttermilk was fed to hogs, said DuPuis. By the 1850s, however, a significant drop in breastfeeding gave rise to the use of cow’s milk for human consumption.
DuPuis’s book reveals the step-by-step transformation of the dairy industry in the United States and illuminates, for the first time, the role of social reformers whose own calls to action were responsible for the many changes that have brought us to today’s model of large-scale factory farming. “That’s what’s so fascinating about milk,” said DuPuis. “It turns out that milk has been intrinsic to every social movement in the United States since about 1850.
Chef’s Note: Happy National Milk Day!