Biosecurity borderlands: Making biosecurity work in a complex landscape

Biosecurity Borderlands seeks to investigate the practices, understandings and pressures created as biosecurity is extended into the British food system and landscape. The economic and social costs associated with communicable animal diseases, particularly after recent foot and mouth, avian influenza and bluetongue outbreaks in the UK, have made biosecurity both a key policy goal and a widely used if poorly understood term. The term biosecurity is often used to suggest a sanitised landscape and a clinical approach to food and agriculture, with little patience for the untidiness of food and landscape practices that need to contend with a range of other concerns. The project explores the interfaces between biosecurity and other concerns, including workers’ health and safety, eating cultures and food security, and wildlife conservation practices. This exploration will be undertaken through ethnographic work on farms, in food safety settings and on wildlife reserves, as well as through focus groups with lay publics. The project is supported by partner organisations including the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and the Food Ethics Council.