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Not on My Farm! Resistance to Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2007

Alan L. Olmstead  and
Paul W. Rhode
Alan L. Olmstead
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics and Director of the Institute of Governmental Affairs at the University of California, Davis, and member of the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.
Paul W. Rhode
Affiliation:
McClelland Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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Abstract

The active opposition to technical change has frequently impeded economic growth. This article examines the widespread resistance to government-led campaigns to use new tuberculin testing technologies to eradicate bovine tuberculosis in the United States. We explore three issues: the political economy of opposition; the role of earlier scientific controversies in the discourse; and the techniques used by the opponents. Over time, the protests shifted from challenging the scientific merits of the testing technology to more nuts-and-bolts distributional and administrative issues.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 67 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 768 - 809
Copyright
© 2007 The Economic History Association

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