Framing bovine tuberculosis: a ‘political ecology of health’ approach to circulation of knowledge(s) about animal disease control

Abstract

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) remains a significant animal health problem with a global distribution. In addition to the ecological complexities, socio‐economic and socio‐cultural factors also affect efforts to control and eliminate the disease. Interrogating bTB from the author's positionality of being both a veterinary epidemiologist and a human geographer, this interdisciplinary engagement in the political ecology of health investigates the experiences and opinions of the actors involved in disease control. The findings of this research in one part of the United Kingdom – Northern Ireland – demonstrate gaps between expert scientific discourse and circulating on‐the‐ground perceptions and lay knowledges of the disease. bTB is therefore known and framed in multiple, often antithetical, ways by those who meet and experience the disease on farms. The paper concludes that farmers, vets and state policy‐makers must accept the heterogeneity of the disease; make it visible again; and create new imaginaries for a future where bTB is no longer an everyday ubiquity.