Pyrrhic Progress The History of Antibiotics in Anglo-American Food Production

"Detailed, ambitious, and enormously capable of explaining the economic, political, industrial, and agricultural cultures relevant to the use of antibiotics in the production of animals for human consumption. Kirchhelle's book is very useful [and] a very interesting contribution on the trajectory of consumer society."- María Jesús Santesmases, Dynamis
"Antibiotics fueled a great leap forward in food production in the twentieth century, but the price of that progress in terms of potential drug resistant infections was known from the start. This timely historical analysis shows us why previous warnings went unheeded and, in the current climate of concern over a post-antibiotic future, how a history of public discourse can provide salient lessons for one this century's most pressing issues."- Steve Hinchliffe, University of Exeter, author of Pathological Lives
"This is an impressive, well-researched, and crucial contribution to the histories of science, technology, medicine, agriculture and policymaking. In the context of our current moment, it helps illuminate the importance and cultural specificity of risk communication work in the wake of both accelerated and slow building health crises."- The English Historical Review
"Kirchhelle reveals both the local contexts and the global consequences of the historical relationship between antibiotics and food production. Beautifully written and exhaustively researched, this is a crucial work for understanding how we evaluate and react to 'risks' more broadly." - Scott Podolsky, Harvard Medical School, author of The Antibiotic Era: Reform, Resistance, and the Pursuit of a Ratio
"This is a great book! Essential reading for anyone concerned about the rise in antibiotics and resistance: Kirchhelle's carefully researched text reveals the back-stories of antibiotics and farming."- Clare Chandler, Professor in Medical Anthropology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
"With Pyrrhic Progress, Kirchhelle is delivering on its promise to provide the first detailed, and often thrilling, historiographical analysis of the use of antibiotics in animal health. If we may be surprised at the choice of leaving aside international organizations - the three 'sisters' that are the WHO (World Health Organization), the FAO and the OIE (Word organization for animal health) having played an important role - this absence ultimately opens up new horizons for social scientists interested in veterinary antibiotics and AMR. For them, as for those involved in the field more generally, this book promises to become an essential reference."- Études Rurales
"A thorough, critical review of the use of antimicrobials in the US and British agricultural industries since the turn of the 20th century, examining the effects on production volume and quality from the perspective of three spheres of interest: agricultural. regulatory, and public....Highly recommended."- Choice

"The meticulous work done by Kirchhelle is certainly commendable: the book stimulates the reader imagination for developing further stories and historical investigations of farmed antibiotics that would be more-than-Western, more-than-elitist and more-than-human."

- Camille Bellet, Agricultural History Review
"Provides crucial insight into the historical complexity of risk regimes and their consequences with regard to antibiotic use in livestock farming."- Bulletin of the History of Medicine
"Pyrrhic Progress is an excellent work of scholarship that makes important, path-breaking contributions to the history of agriculture, pharmaceuticals, politics, and policymaking in the United States and Britain in the post-World War II era. The connection between guarding against and preparing for antimicrobial resistance and climate change is fantastic, and no other work has examined these important issues as exhaustively."- Kendra Smith-Howard, author of Pure and Modern Milk: An Environmental History since 1900
"Kirchhelle's study achieves a considerable and important feat, adding an innovative comprehensive framework, which integrates the production and perception of risks across human and animal medicine as well as across two key countries, to the historiography of antibiotics, technological consequences, and risks."- Lucas M. Mueller, Technology and Culture
"Provides a much-needed and painstakingly researched history of the nonhuman use of antibiotics in live- stock production and the professional turf wars and policy debates that have followed their use in farming since the 1940s....Pyrrhic Progress adds to a growing literature on the chemical revolution that has trans- formed modern agriculture and the environment more broadly. It adds to a vibrant literature on animal studies which is bringing down conceptual walls that falsely divide the history of humans from that of other animals."- H-Net