M. Murphy

This book features five peer-reviewed reviews on best practices for improving the sustainability of dairy production. The first chapter reviews the main, internationally accepted methods available to evaluate the environmental impact of dairy farming, identify levers of action and set environmental targets. The second chapter considers how dairy farms can manage both energy consumption and water in order to minimise their environmental impacts. The chapter also addresses the issue of sustainable water use. The third chapter provides a compilation of current research which highlights the need to further examine dietary mitigation strategies in ruminant production systems at a whole farm level. The chapter also discusses the range of nutritional strategies available for enteric- and manure-CH4 abatement. The fourth chapter focusses on the role of the ruminant microbiome in methane emissions and the potential genetic factors affecting microbial composition and emission reduction. The final chapter highlights the growing issue of food loss and waste (FLW) in countries with developed dairy value chains. The chapter discusses the key stages and management practices for reducing FLW in dairy value chains, as well as how decision-making can be improved.

In Seizing the Means of Reproduction, M. Murphy's initial focus on the alternative health practices developed by radical feminists in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s opens into a sophisticated analysis of the transnational entanglements of American empire, population control, neoliberalism, and late-twentieth-century feminisms. Murphy concentrates on the technoscientific means-the technologies, practices, protocols, and processes-developed by feminist health activists. They argue that by politicizing the technical details of reproductive health, alternative feminist practices aimed at empowering women were also integral to late-twentieth-century biopolitics. Murphy traces the transnational circulation of cheap, do-it-yourself health interventions, highlighting the uneasy links between economic logics, new forms of racialized governance, U. S. imperialism, family planning, and the rise of NGOs. In the twenty-first century, feminist health projects have followed complex and discomforting itineraries. The practices and ideologies of alternative health projects have found their way into World Bank guidelines, state policies, and commodified research. While the particular moment of U. S. feminism in the shadow of Cold War and postcolonialism has passed, its dynamics continue to inform the ways that health is governed and politicized today.

Before 1980, sick building syndrome did not exist. By the 1990s, it was among the most commonly investigated occupational health problems in the United States. Afflicted by headaches, rashes, and immune system disorders, office workers-mostly women-protested that their workplaces were filled with toxic hazards; yet federal investigators could detect no chemical cause. This richly detailed history tells the story of how sick building syndrome came into being: how indoor exposures to chemicals wafting from synthetic carpet, ink, adhesive, solvents, and so on became something that relatively privileged Americans worried over, felt, and ultimately sought to do something about. As M. Murphy shows, sick building syndrome provides a window into how environmental politics moved indoors. Sick building syndrome embodied a politics of uncertainty that continues to characterize contemporary American environmental debates. Murphy explores the production of uncertainty by juxtaposing multiple histories, each of which explains how an expert or lay tradition made chemical exposures perceptible or imperceptible, existent or nonexistent. They show how uncertainty emerged from a complex confluence of feminist activism, office worker protests, ventilation engineering, toxicology, popular epidemiology, corporate science, and ecology. In an illuminating case study, she reflects on EPA scientists’ efforts to have their headquarters recognized as a sick building. Murphy brings all of these histories together in what is not only a thorough account of an environmental health problem but also a much deeper exploration of the relationship between history, materiality, and uncertainty.

Before 1980, sick building syndrome did not exist. By the 1990s, it was among the most commonly investigated occupational health problems in the United States. Afflicted by headaches, rashes, and immune system disorders, office workers-mostly women-protested that their workplaces were filled with toxic hazards; yet federal investigators could detect no chemical cause. This richly detailed history tells the story of how sick building syndrome came into being: how indoor exposures to chemicals wafting from synthetic carpet, ink, adhesive, solvents, and so on became something that relatively privileged Americans worried over, felt, and ultimately sought to do something about. As M. Murphy shows, sick building syndrome provides a window into how environmental politics moved indoors. Sick building syndrome embodied a politics of uncertainty that continues to characterize contemporary American environmental debates. Murphy explores the production of uncertainty by juxtaposing multiple histories, each of which explains how an expert or lay tradition made chemical exposures perceptible or imperceptible, existent or nonexistent. They show how uncertainty emerged from a complex confluence of feminist activism, office worker protests, ventilation engineering, toxicology, popular epidemiology, corporate science, and ecology. In an illuminating case study, she reflects on EPA scientists’ efforts to have their headquarters recognized as a sick building. Murphy brings all of these histories together in what is not only a thorough account of an environmental health problem but also a much deeper exploration of the relationship between history, materiality, and uncertainty.