The Spaces of Biosecurity: Prescribing and Negotiating Solutions to Bovine Tuberculosis

Abstract

Using the example of bovine tuberculosis, this paper explores the emergence, understanding, and rejection of new forms of biosecurity. The paper argues that debates over biosecurity can be conceptualised as arguments over the ability to regulate flows of disease and the constructions of space they adopt. Data from parliamentary inquiries and interviews are used to show how attempts to institutionalise forms of biosecurity emerge from a delicate balance of prescribed and negotiated spaces configured by a host of social, natural, and material agents. The interaction between these spaces provides a way of regulating the flows of disease and purifying agricultural space. This balance is resisted by farmers, whose practical knowledges of the constant struggle of managing the contingencies of agriculture lead them to suggest that only uniform versions of space can effectively regulate flows of disease. The author concludes by discussing the importance of recognising these differences for future biosecurity and animal health policy.