Veterinary Fencing in Eastern Germany: The More-Than-Human Borderlands of African Swine Fever

Abstract

This chapter analyses how veterinary fencing – the erection of material barriers aiming to stop the spreading of animal disease – became a central governmental practice in the eastern German borderlands with Poland. During an acute outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) from September 2020 onwards, German authorities were under increasing pressure to restore the disease-free status of the country and consequently lift the export restrictions placed on German pig farmers. This led to the proliferation of a continuously expanding network of material barriers in the German borderlands. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in the state of Saxony, I will illustrate how this network resulted from a number of unruly non-humans who refused to comply with the government’s plan to produce a tight barrier along the national borderline, creating instead continuous leakages and transgressions. This demonstrates how non-humans resisted to veterinary fencing, actively co-constituting the more-than-human borderlands that arise in the context of animal disease.

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