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Paper short abstract:

Examining the Third Plague Pandemic as a global panzootic I propose that the “panzootic” is a notion useful for anthropological and historical discussions of the anthropogenic entanglements of the multispecies complexities of animal pandemics and of human responses to these on global scales.

Paper long abstract:

The third plague pandemic (1894-1959) was the first pandemic of Yersinia pestis to be understood through framings of rodents as the principal hosts of the disease, and rats as the global spreaders of the pathogen. This paper urges us see the pandemic as an anthropogenic panzootic: a global outbreak of plague that affected and interlinked different rodent species and populations across the globe. I will argue that this rodent panzootic took two forms: first, it involved the mass death of rodents as a result of plague infection, as fostered by the unprecedented global circulation of the pathogen through maritime trade; second, it involved the mass killing of rodents carried out by humans across the globe in an effort to stem the human pandemic. In this sense, the paper proposes that the “panzootic” is a notion useful for anthropological and historical discussions of the anthropogenic entanglements of the multispecies and global scales of epizootics and human responses to animal diseases on a global scale.

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Paper short abstract:

Measures of biosecurity and techniques of preparedness are reorganized when bird flu is framed as endemic rather than pandemic, when H5N1 is perceived as mutating not through a teleological line from wild birds to poultry to humans, but in multi-directional lines across equally vulnerable species.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropologists have investigated how avian influenza has been managed as a potentially pandemic disease since the emergence of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus in China in 1997 and its spread in Europe and Africa in 2005. Since 2018, the H5N1-related viruses have become “endemic among poultry among a number of countries” (says Thijs Kuiken, one of Europe’s main experts on avian influenza), and wild birds, considered as reservoirs and sane carriers of H5N1, have become more vulnerable to the mutations of the virus, with numerous outbreaks and fatalities in Northern Europe and across the American coasts. Measures of biosecurity and techniques of preparedness have been applied to outbreaks of avian influenza so as to mitigate its spread from birds to humans. Among these are the lockdown of farms to protect poultry from contact with wild birds, the use of unvaccinated poultry as sentinels to monitor the mutations of viruses within farms and the simulation of influenza outbreaks to train poultry workers by worst-case scenarios. Based on archival research and fieldwork investigation, I will examine how these measures of biosecurity and techniques of preparedness are reorganized when avian influenza is framed as endemic rather than pandemic. I will ask how notions of animal reservoirs and cross-species transmission are inflected when the H5N1 viruses are perceived as mutating not only through a teleological line from wild birds to poultry to humans, following a global public health perspective, but in multi-directional lines across species perceived as equally vulnerable, following a “one health” perspective.

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Paper short abstract:

While climate change and new human-animal-environment assemblages increase the chance that tick-borne animal and human diseases continue to escalate globally, One Health theory struggles to produce practical, feasible and sustainable solutions to contain this risk.

Paper long abstract:

With 900 species, excellent physical resilience, the ability to thrive in a vast range of environments, the biting preference for the most inaccessible body parts and rather nonselective feeding behaviour, ticks are second – so far (and cases are already underreported) – only to mosquitoes in the number of disease cases they cause in the human population worldwide. Epidemiological data on tick-borne diseases (TBDs) in the animal population is uncertain, because of the poor knowledge of several of these TBDs, frequent co-infection, and mild and vague symptoms in other-than-human beings. Yet TBDs like babesiosis in Africa’s bovines and winter tick parasitism in North America’s moose are already a cause of high veterinary concern, while others often emerge in unsuspected new locations (like Rocky Mountain spotted fever in dogs in Mexico) or are detected for the first time in their traditional hosts (like tick-borne encephalitis in deer in Italy). Meanwhile, ticks are on the move due to climate change (moving up mountains and parallels) and animal movements, spreading TBD risk into new areas and animal and human bodies. Control currently relies on prevention through increased risk awareness and protective behaviours, but if this is hardly working in humans, how can it work in domestic and, even more, wild animals? In this scenario of high human-animal-environment interdependency, One Health strategies are ideal in theory, but the (still largely unknown) complexity of this relationship hampers the identification of the most feasible and sustainable ways to prevent TBDs from continuing to escalate globally.

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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the trace of the UK's 2001 Foot-and-Mouth Disease outbreak as an ethnographic case study, this paper asks what we might learn about the human experience of an animal disease outbreak by bringing the anthropology of affect and medical anthropology into conversation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper asks what we might learn about the human experience of an animal disease outbreak by bringing the anthropology of affect and medical anthropology into conversation. Drawing on Cumbrian hill farmers’ reflections of their experience of the UK’s 2001 Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak, this paper seeks to open the floor to this discussion. In 2001, FMD reappeared in Britain and, in a period of a little over eight months, led to the deaths of over six-million farm animals (sheep and cattle, predominantly), cost the country an estimated £8 billion (the equivalent of £14 billion today) and brought the British farming community to its knees. The UK government employed a blanket culling policy in an effort to halt the disease. Cumbria was by far the worst effected region, enduring a disproportionate 44% of the national total of animal deaths. The 2001 outbreak left a profound mark both on Cumbria and on those who farmed through it. Now, over twenty years on, the spectre of FMD and the ghosts of the livestock culled remain very much ‘alive’ in the memory of many Cumbrian farmers. This paper suggests that a productive way we might begin to unravel ethnographically the complex social life of epizootics and panzootics, and the enduring relationship between humans in the present and animals over two-decades dead, is by combining anthropological theories of affect and medical anthropology.

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Paper short abstract:

The Jaraguá Indigenous Land is the smallest indigenous territory in Brazil and is surrounded by the city of São Paulo. This paper will focus on describing the interspecies relations between dogs and rats in the villages and their relevance to complexify understandings about leptospirosis.

Paper long abstract:

The Jaraguá Indigenous Land (Brazil), inhabited by the Guarani-Mbya people, is the smallest indigenous territory in Brazil and is surrounded by the city of São Paulo, the biggest metropolis in the South Hemisphere. In recent years, the villages have recorded some cases of human leptospirosis, and this paper will focus on describing the interspecies relations between dogs and rats and how they can complexify the epidemiological understandings about leptospirosis maintenance and transmission between animals. The villages are overpopulated by a multitude of dogs, which are abandoned by the urban citizens in the nearby streets and end up finding shelter and food inside the villages. According to the Guarani-Mbya people, the large population of dogs, the precarious villages infra-structures and the surrounding urban environment are related to frequent rat sightings near their houses. In epidemiological studies, rats are known as the main reservoirs of Leptospira species bacteria. Beyond the serovars of the canine leptospirosis, dogs have also been reported to be relevant carriers of different Leptospira species. Dogs and rats are known by the Guarani-Mbya people for their messy behaviour of scattering rubbish across the villages while scavenging for food inside bins and refuse bags. There are also stories of rats stealing food from dog bowls and dogs chasing and killing rats in the villages. This paper will interrogate how the dog-rat relations observed by the Guarani people can help us to define the global emergence of panzootics through the entanglements between human and animals socialities in local ethnographic contexts.

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Paper short abstract:

During the 2023 austral summer, the panzootic HPAI virus reached sub-Antarctica for the first time, affecting archipelagos of the Southern Atlantic Ocean. The presence of the virus in those remote territories raise border issues -from geographical to societal and species ones.

Paper long abstract:

i)Disease in the Overseas: modulation of borders between the centre and the periphery:

Monitoring infectious disease in United Kingdom Overseas Territories raises logistical issues not only related to the geographical distance but also to the mode of governance between a metropole and its scattered territories. Applying the same sampling protocols as in the UK can be irrelevant. For instance, sample preservation protocols may be incompatible with analysis timeframes, potentially affecting the diagnostic results. This gap towards material needs highlights how decentralisation can hinder the monitoring and control of epizootic events in the overseas territories.

ii)Contact boundary with the wildlife questioned in the prism of surveillance:

As major touristic destinations and a “gateway to Antarctica”, restricting tourists’ access to affected territories of the Southern Atlantic comes up as the first mean of limiting viral spread. However, in South Georgia, most of the detection of suspicious HPAI cases have been identified by tourism operators reporting dead wildlife. Similarly, in Falklands, the touristic perimeter is broader than the scientific one, and allowing leisure trips can broaden the scope of disease surveillance.

iii)Making the frontiers visible: phylogenetic tools at the intersection of spaces and species:

The first phylogenetic analyses of sub-Antarctica HPAI viral isolates reveal close genetic proximity with South American ones, showing that animals connect remote territories. If the transmission chain between marine mammals and seabirds remains unknown, future genetic analyses could track the invisible path of a virus ignoring state boundaries and challenging species barrier.

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Paper short abstract:

Stemming from research in the GCRF One Health Poultry Hub - a project exploring disease risks in the commercial poultry sector - this paper investigates how strategies employed on poultry farms of varying modality are impacting the panzootic potentials of the poultry sector in Northern Viet Nam.

Paper long abstract:

Stemming from a component of work conducted as part of the UKRI GCRF One Health Poultry Hub – a five-year interdisciplinary project exploring disease risks generated through the intensification of poultry production systems in South and Southeast Asia - this paper focuses on the commercial farming modalities shaping the sector in Northern Viet Nam. In light of the sector’s dramatic growth and shift towards intensification, this research explores independent and contracted poultry farming modalities and the farming practices and livelihood strategies employed in each. Specifically, it considers diversified farming operations alongside the increasing number of intensified monoculture farms and the consequences these modalities can have for panzootic transmission within and across species.

Drawing on data gathered through fieldwork in three provinces of Northern Viet Nam, this work describes key strategies poultry farmers employ to sustain their businesses when operating independent or contracted farms and why. Specifically, it speaks to how factors such as breed, season, physical farm size and infrastructure and farming modality (contract or independent) contribute to how and when birds come into contact with other species and each other in varying numbers. I then considers these findings in light of the social, economic, political and environmental context in which farms operate. In doing so, this paper discusses why farming households in Northern Viet Nam choose to (or feel they must) employ certain common livelihood strategies when operating independent or contracted farms, what that means for the human-animal interface the farms, and that may inform panzootic disease emergence/transmission.

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Paper short abstract:

Building on current multi-species ethnographic work with zoo keepers and rangers, this paper explores how panzootic threats are reshaping conservation care and multi-species relationships in a zoo in the northern UK; and their implications and challenges for a public Planetary Health.

Paper long abstract:

The panzootics of SARS-CoV-2 and H5N1 simultaneously reinforce and trouble both the biosecurity logics underlying care in conservation, and the human-animal care relationships that sit at the heart of zoo keepers' conservation practice. Drawing from recent multi-species ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a British zoo between 2021-2023, this paper seeks to bring into focus what it means to physically care for animals in a panzootic world, and how this kind of care challenges the projects of OneHealth and Planetary Health. The urgency of panzootic infection management and biosecurity presents site managers and staff with a fundamentally different timescale than the multi-generational visions conservation care is most comfortable with; and the potential ubiquitousness of infectious risk within and across species intensifies the spatial and material demands of care in the zoo's ex-situ conservation. Through both space and time, SARS-CoV-2 and H5N1 have changed, and are continuing to change, the daily rhythms of multi-species care and multi-species relationships within ex-situ conservation. Panzootic outbreaks highlight how animal care professionals become health care professionals trained to encounter chronic and acute disease across a variety of plant and animal species within the contagious worlds of the Anthropocene. The phenomenon of the panzootic is reshaping modes of care in zoo conservation through its intensity; and its combination of animal husbandry and interest in the conservation of and care for the non-human offers a different perspective into the balance of medical and veterinary focal points within OneHealth and Planetary Health.