A Relational Network Vulnerability Assessment of the North Carolina Hog Industry

Abstract

Vulnerability and biosecurity scholars argue for the need to analyze vulnerability to hazards as a relational process. We propose a network vulnerability assessment that fills this gap by drawing on actor-network theory, rooted networks, and an analytical framework from vulnerability literature that analyzes exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to hazards. We demonstrate how to conduct such an assessment and the value of this approach through a network vulnerability assessment of North Carolina's hog industry to a potential foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak. This approach allows us to analyze how power-laden relationships among humans and nonhumans create and stabilize exposure routes for FMD. A relational process allows us to analyze the sensitivity of the network from the unique perspectives of different actants, from which we can see that the relationships of some can trigger the agency of others, including the FMD virus. This more-than-human analysis allows us to see that the species and breed of actants have a significant impact on the sensitivity of the network to biohazards. Understanding adaptive capacity as networked, we examine how the processes of actant rootedness and mobility shape the network's ability to adapt to a disaster. We see that the need to circulate pigs through the network daily makes it impossible to adapt to a disaster that stops that circulation, creating tens of millions of pig bodies to dispose of. Rooted in North Carolina's coastal plains, the network lacks the capacity to safely dispose of these bodies, creating a secondary disaster of mass water contamination.