In the late 1940s, fishermen near Lederle Laboratories in New York State noted that trout seemed to be larger than before. When Dr. Thomas Jukes, a prominent biochemist, investigated the apparent phenomenon with his colleague Dr. Robert Stokstad, they found that the antibiotic Aureomycin in the runoff from Lederle’s plant was the cause. After experimentation with livestock and poultry produced similar results, the serendipitous discovery was hailed as an agricultural breakthrough.
