Paper short abstract:

Livestock diseases are targeted not only through globalised forms of governance but also technical practices of meat processing. In Mongolia, where livestock diseases have posed a barrier to export, such practices facilitate the export of meat to China, but also generate distinctive anxieties.

Paper long abstract:

The threat posed by the spread of livestock diseases is increasingly addressed through globally-circulating forms of governance which target rural populations in developing countries. Scholars have critiqued how such initiatives restructure rural lives and livelihoods on the periphery in the interests of securing the livelihoods of farmers in the global north. But much of the cross border trade in livestock and meat takes place between countries outside the global north, and is subject to specific national regulations and bilateral agreements.

Mongolia is today seeking to export more meat, particularly to its southern neighbour China, as it attempts to diversity its economy away from mining, though the prevalence of livestock diseases in a country where mobile pastoralism predominates poses a significant obstacle to this development path. International organisations have initiated programmes which aim to address the problem of livestock diseases by targeting and transforming pastoralists. However, China’s demand for Mongolian meat is such that an interim workaround has been found. Livestock production itself is left alone, but sheep and goat meat is heat-treated in Chinese-run factories in periurban Ulaanbaatar before crossing the border.

This paper situates this particular biosecurity practice in cultural, historical and political context. It shows how this apparently mundane technical practice has generated intense anxieties in the Mongolian capital, as concerns about urban food supply and safety articulate with longstanding fears over Chinese influence. The paper thus argues for attention to the ways in which particular, situated sociotechnical arrangements shape the geopolitics of biosecurity beyond global north/south binaries.