By Kenneth Kwama
The French scientist who invented butter was inspired by an imperial edict by Emperor Napoleon III of France who offered prize money to whoever could find a cheaper substitute for butter, which had become expensive.
In 1868, the scientist, Mege-Mourees invented margarine as a substitute for butter by mixing beef fat with milk. The product was called oleomargarine, but due to opposition from butter manufacturers, it was considered nasty and ‘good’ grocers were prohibited from selling it. Some of those who sold margarine were arrested for handling an ‘illicit product.’
According to a story carried by a 1921 Time magazine, the inventor was given a French patent for his process in 1869 and a US patent in 1873.
His American patent was bought in 1874 by the US Dairy Company, which went on to introduce margarine in the US. The company opened 15 factories over a span of seven years, with five of them being in New York.
The firm and its subsidiary, the Commercial Manufacturing Company, made margarine and was an industry leader commanding about 10 per cent of the market. By 1882, the firm was producing close to 22.7 tonnes of margarine per day and more than 9.1 million tones annually.
"As margarine prices fell, consumers were won over, especially poor individuals and families who preferred it to the cheap low-grade dairy butter produced by small family farms. Larger high-grade producers of butter were also threatened," states www.thefreemanonline.org.
Butter producers realised that they were quickly losing market share to the cheaper margarine and started a slanderous war that often drew in state officers and health officials who were often compromised to give biased opinion.
In Britain where butter manufacturers were fighting the popularity of margarine, the superintendent of Manchester and Salford markets voiced a concern about the quality of margarine in 1881.
The superintendent was quoted saying: "I seized 13 tubs of margarine at a wholesaler confectioner’s bakery. It stunk fearfully and was of many colours. Tons of this stuff is used by many of the wholesale confectioners in all the large towns. I believe it consists of the scrapings of butter from grocer’s shops, mixed with the inevitable dirt, and has as such become rancid, and altogether too bad to be used in the ordinary way."
In 1882, at a meeting of the House Ways and Means Committee, the vice president of the New York State Dairy Association, Prof L B Arnold, testified that the availability of margarine had caused producers of creamery butters to increase their quality in order to maintain their comparative advantage.
dubious legislation
Four years later, the House passed the Federal Margarine Act of 1886, as part of an 80-year war on butter’s toughest competitor.
The law stated: "No person shall manufacture, out of any oleaginous substance or substances or any compound of the same other than that produced from unadulterated milk or of cream any article designed to take the place of butter…or shall sell or offer for sale the same as an article of food."
The Act was the capstone of a movement to prevent consumers from enjoying margarine, which was the cheaper spread. The advocates of the Act, and of earlier state laws regulating the packaging and sale of margarine, argued they were preventing unscrupulous wholesalers and retailers from masking margarine as the more expensive dairy butter and duping unwitting consumers.
The dairy lobby moved to bury the margarine industry forever by waging a slanderous disinformation campaign. Dairy industry association newspapers published lurid tales of margarine production designed to incite and horrify the public.
Margarine was described as "the slag of the butcher shop… a compound of diseased hogs and dead dogs." Reports claimed margarine produced insanity and even "contained the germs of cancer."
Not to be outdone, amateur scientists lent their dubious credibility to the debate. One academic, Prof Piper published drawings of his alleged findings in a Chicago newspaper.
The dubious research carried out by the ‘professor’ revealed lurid details of ‘contaminants’ whose details can’t be published in a family newspaper.
Dairy propaganda political cartoons at the time featured elaborate "artists’ recreations" of margarine factories, showing how fantasy ingredients including stray cats, soap, paint and old boots and hats, animal intestines were made into margarine.
powerful fight back
To this volleys in what was dubbed the "Butter War" a spokesman for the margarine producers calmly responded, "Of course, the laws had for a time its effect upon the sale of the product, but as oleomargarine is a pure and wholesome article of food, possessing all the qualities of good dairy butter, the people have overlooked the name and have decided to eat it."
Later, the New York law that made selling of margarine difficult was struck down as unconstitutional. The Court of Appeals ruled that the claim margarine was unwholesome had not been proven and that the government could not shut down one industry in order to protect another.
This enabled the besieged margarine industry to pick itself up and it struck back by making newer inventions that endeared it to the public thus ensuring sustainability.
