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Short abstract:

This paper draws on sociological studies of diagnostic practice in human medicine and compares veterinarians’ diagnostic practices and management of infections in individual animals and groups of animals repectively.

Long abstract:

Diagnosis is at the heart of medical practice. While diagnostic practice in human medicine is relatively well-studied, the knowledge of veterinarian practice is limited. In particular, little is known on how veterinarians’ diagnostic practices differ between animals that are related to at the group level and animals who are related to as individuals. This paper draws on sociological studies of diagnostic practice in human medicine and compares veterinarians’ diagnostic practices and management of infections, including decisions on antimicrobial prescription or other measures for managing disease, in dairy cattle and poultry. I argue that the focus on individuals and flocks interacts with different knowledge practices, which differentially shape diseases as phenomena. Cattle veterinarians’ diagnostic practice aims at identifying and managing disease in individual animals – which might or might not be deemed killable, due to their anticipated future productivity. While the locus of disease in a bovine body is potentially certain, the same body is also a source of uncertainty. By contrast, diagnostic practice for poultry aims at identifying disease in a flock – individual animals can then, through their positions as killable, be known more or less in full. However, these individual animals only give clues about disease in the flock, which means that the precise locus of disease seldom can be definitely established.