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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 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.