Drawing on the propositions of symmetrical anthropology and economic anthropology, this article studies the way in which scientists and engineers evaluate, re-translate, and redistribute the natural and social properties of living beings to turn them into tradable goods. Based on a short genealogy of dairy cattle breeding markets, the analysis pays particular attention to the evolution of material flows and (trans)formation processes through which biological artefacts that make up the commodification of cattle come to exist and circulate. The general question guiding the analysis is: how does ‘animal genetics’ become a commodity? From a sociohistorical study of the methods of production, amplification and distribution of ‘genetic progress’ in animal production, we first show that the commodification of animal genetics involves the invention of a mode of genetic progress which is neither affected by social (political, moral, etc.) nor by natural (biological, environmental, etc.) contingencies and which can thus circulate in full autonomy in a variety of situations which it helps to unify. We then show that the gain in autonomy vis-à-vis a large panel of social and natural contingencies is correlated with the establishment of a strong heteronomy regarding an often invisible and transparent socio-technical infrastructure which supports the existence of a new order, endowed with its own laws, its own history, its own purposes: the market economy.