Food Risks in Rural Communities

For my PhD, I examined the role of nature in the formation of rural community identities in two different villages in England. The two villages were examples of the so-called "differentiated countryside" (see Marsden et al, 1993): one on the edge of Manchester, an emerging prosperous area. The other was village was located in Devon - an example of a more traditional countryside. I lived in both villages for several months in order to conduct the community study.

One of the key research agendas to emerge from the Devon village related to the consumption of unpasteurised milk. Unpasteurised milk was connected to various incidents of ill health - contamination from E-coli, salmonella and, of course, traditionally bovine tuberculosis. Still, residents of the village consumed it regularly. In fact, one of the local farmers had a milk round on which he sold his own unpasteurised milk.

The research concentrated on the role that unpasteurised milk played in creating community identities and how villagers understood the risks of drinking unpasteurised milk. Briefly, consuming unpasteurised milk seemed to confirm a rural status and confirmed that you belonged to the village community. These attitudes to risk - rejecting science and claiming that a bit of dirt was good for you - were part and parcel of becoming rural. The story is told in more depth in a paper in the Journal of Rural Studies.

Just after completing this research, the Labour government announced in 1997 that it would consult on banning the sale and consumption of unpasteurised. It had already been banned in Scotland. The food minister Jeff Rooker was in favour, based on the precautionary principle - it was the same time as the beef on the bone ban and the legacy of BSE. The consultation attracted thousands of letters of complaint. I analysed a sample of the various arguments within a sample of these letters. They are summarised in a paper published in Sociologia Ruralis.

A central theme to my PhD was the application of Actor-Network Theory to rural community studies. The theory was particularly interested in the relations between people and nature. The PhD formed an attempt to merge actor-network theory with some of the more traditional ways of looking at the rural community. The example of unpasteurised milk helped to do this and is examined in a recent book chapter:

"Dirty Foods, Healthy Communities? Hybridty, Rurality and the Consumption of Unpasteurised Milk in Rural England". In Cox, R. and Campkin, B. (Eds. 2007) Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination (London: IB Tauris) 168-77

Research Projects

My research covers the broad sphere of issues relating to animal health. I am interested in the regulation of animal health; the governance of animal health; the communication of animal health risks to farmers; and understandings and attitudes to animal health risk by people living in rural areas.

My research projects are listed below:


Styles of Veterinary Regulation

This project is funded by the ESRC and runs from 2008-2010.
The aim of this project is to examine the importance and practice of veterinary regulation for rural veterinary practices and vets themselves. The study is based around the significance of TB testing for veterinary practices in England and Wales. Ethnographic methods such as workshadowing vets in a limited number of veterinary practices are being used. More information can be found on the project's home page.


Understanding Animal Health

This ESRC project ran from 2006-2008. The project examined the governance of animal health, focusing specifically on bovine tuberculosis. The project examined how farmers understood the disease, how these understandings interacted with government advice and what this meant for the communication and uptake of biosecurity. The project also examined the role of partnership governance in developing biosecurity guidelines, and the role of trading standards in enforcing new animal health regulations. More information on the project can be found on the project's home page.

Veterinary Capacity in Wales

This project was funded by the Welsh Assembly Government and runs from 2008-9. Stage 1 of the project examined veterinary capacity in Wales to deliver the Government's proposed bovine tuberculosis "Health Check". Stage 2 will examine the impact of the Health Check on rural veterinary practices following its completion in 2009. More information on the project can be found on the project's home page.


Evaluating Biosecurity

This project was funded by the Welsh Assembly Government and ran from 2006-2008. It was conducted with the Royal Veterinary College, ADAS and BRASS. The project examined the impact of the Welsh Assembly Government's Biosecurity Intensive Treatment Area - an attempt to encourage farmers to improve their biosecurity. More information on the project can be found on the project's home page.

Food Risks in Rural Areas

This project formed part of my PhD research between 1995-2000. The research examined how attitudes to risks were affected by social ties within rural community. The project focused on the risks of unpasteurised milk and was conducted using a community study of one village in north Devon. More information can be found on the project's home page.

All Conference Papers

All my biosecurity and rural policy conference papers are listed below by date order. Many, if not all, have either subsequently been published in academic journals. Also included are presentations made to policy makers and stakeholder groups.

2011

Farmers' Confidence in Badger Vaccination - Defra (February, 2011) and WAG (March, 2011)

The social and economic impacts of Bovine Tuberculosis in West Wales – March 17^th, 2011 Carmarthen Regional TB Eradication Board.

Living with Bovine Tuberculosis and the Geography of Veterinary Protocols – February 14th, Nottingham University 2011 

Biosecurity and Risk. BRASS Food Conference, February 8-9^th 2011, Cardiff University. 

Social Impacts of Bovine Tuberculosis in West Wales, January 2011. Welsh Regional Eradication Boards Annual Conference.

2010 

Gut feeling: the zoonotic affects of living with disease. RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London, September 2010.

On farm practice and knowledge: what qualitative research can tell us about practical policy implementation. Defra Social Science Workshop, London, December 2010.

Living with Animal Disease. ESRC Biosecurity Seminar Series, Birkbeck University, London, 26th November 2010.

Behaviour Change Amongst Farmers and Vets, Welsh Assembly Government & Northern Ireland Bovine Tuberculosis meeting, November 2010.

Living with Bovine Tuberculosis, British Science Association Annual Conference, Food Security and Animal Disease, September, 2010.

Biosecurity Expertise, Veterinary Laboratories Agency and Defra Economics and Social Science Workshop, Weybridge, September, 2010

The Consequences of Living with Disease: Observations on Bovine Tuberculosis, Warwick University / RELU Seminar, May 2010

Communities of Practice and the Management of Bovine Tuberculosis. Seminar at CCRI, February 2010

2009

 

Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Biosecurity Knowledge Transfer Interventions in England and Wales, Fifth International M.Bovis Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, August 25-28th 2009.

The Expertise of the Veterinary Protocol, XXIII European Congress for Rural Sociology, Vaasa, Finland, August 2009.

Communities of Veterinary Practice and the Surveillance of Bovine Tuberculosis, Warwick University, 2nd December 2009

Why is there no veterinary social science? Vets and Social Science Collaboratory, Royal Veterinary College, 16th November, 2009

Preventing the Paradox: Social Capital and the Surveillance of Bovine TB. Surveillance and Nonhuman Life ESRC Seminar Series, Newcastle University, January 8th, 2009.

2008


"The lie of the land. From idiom to critique". With Keith Halfacree. Royal Geographical Society annual conference, London, August 2008.

"Holy Cow! Shambo and the Contested Solutions to Bovine Tuberculosis". Royal Geographical Society annual conference, London, August 2008.

"Scripts in Agriculture: Why farming scripts have policy relevance". With Frank Vanclay, Institute of Australian Geographers annual conference, Hobart, Tasmania, July, 2008.

Farmers’ Understanding of Biosecurity and Bovine Tuberculosis. Seminar presentation at University of Liverpool Veterinary School, 10th January, 2008

Farmers’ Understanding of Biosecurity and Bovine Tuberculosis. Presentation to Welsh Assembly Government policy and stakeholder group (January, 2008).

2007

Oral and written evidence presented to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee’s inquiry into bovine tuberculosis (November, 2007)

Farmers’ Understanding of Biosecurity and Bovine Tuberculosis. Presentation to Defra policy and stakeholder group (October 2007)

Farmers’ Understanding of Biosecurity and Bovine Tuberculosis. Presentation to Defra TB Husbandry group (September 2007)

TB Policy: a role for biosecurity? Annual Badger Trust Conference, Derbyshire, July 2007.

"Its luck if you go clear and bad luck if you go down": Lay Epidemiology, Candidates for Bovine Tuberculosis and the Implications for Biosecurity. Royal Geographical Society annual conference, London, August 2007.

"Biosecurity, Sound Science and Partnership Decision Making”. Royal Geographical Society annual conference, London, August 2007 [with Alex Franklin].

Lay Epidemiology, Candidates for Bovine Tuberculosis and the Implications for Biosecurity. XXII European Congress for Rural Sociology, Wageningen, Holland, August 2007.

"Biosecurity, Sound Science and Partnership Decision Making". XXII European Congress for Rural Sociology, Wageningen, Holland, August 2007 [with Alex Franklin].

"Farmers’ attitudes to culling and curing badgers from bovine tuberculosis". Animals and Society II Conference, Tasmania, July, 2007.

"The place of human-animals relationships in the control of disease: the case of bovine tuberculosis". Animals and Society Conference II, Tasmania, July, 2007 [with Alex Franklin].

2006

"The Spaces of Biosecurity". Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Chicago, March, 2006.

"Rural Policy and the New Localism: An Examination of Local Public Service Agreements". XXI European Congress for Rural Sociology, Keszthely, Hungary, 2005.

2002

"Promoting Health Eating and Local Foods: Incompatible goals? Unpasteurised Milk, Lay Immunology and Rural Identity". Annual Meeting of the Rural Economy and Society Study Group, Cardiff, September 2002.

2001

Risking the Rural: Moral Behaviours and the Consumption of Unpasteurised Milk. XIX European Congress for Rural Sociology, Dijon, France, September 2001.

Volunteering for the rural? Unravelling community action in rural Britain. RGS-IBG annual conference, Plymouth, January 2001. [with A. Ellis].

2000

The Possibilities and Practicalities of using Actor Network Theory in Rural Community Studies. Rural Research and Qualitative Methods RESSG seminar series, Leeds, June 2000.

1999

Doing your PhD: Ethnography, Actor-Network Theory and Rural Studies. Rural Geography Study Group Postgraduate Conference, Swansea, May 1999.
1998

Hybrid ruralities and the differentiated countryside’. Association of American Geographers annual conference, Boston, March 1998.

Heterogeneous relations and the differentiated countryside. RGS-IBG annual conference, Kingston, January 1998.

1997

Heterogeneous Relations and the Construction of Rural Space. Rural Economy and Society Study Group annual conference, Worcester, September 1997.

All Publications

All my biosecurity and rural policy publications are listed below in date order. Please contact me for copies.

Forthcoming/In Press

Enticott, G. and Law, R. (forthcoming) Buying Biosecurity – Compensation for Animal Diseases. In Havinga, T. and Casey, D. (Eds) ‘Regulation of Food in the Age of Crises. Transformations and challenges of food governance’. ECPR Press, Colchester. 

Enticott, G. and Franklin, A. (forthcoming) Biosecurity and Food Security: Spatial Strategies for Combating Bovine Tuberculosis in the United Kingdom. Submitted to Geographical Journal as part of special issue on food security and biosecurity.

Vanclay, F. and Enticott, G. (forthcoming) The role and functioning of cultural scripts in farming and Agriculture. Sociologia Ruralis, in press.

2011

Gareth Enticott, Andrew Donaldson, Philip Lowe, Megan Power, Amy Proctor and Katy Wilkinson (forthcoming) The Changing Role of Veterinary Expertise in the Food Chain. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (Special Issue: Managing Infectious Diseases in Animal and Plants). In press.

Enticott, G. (forthcoming) The Local Universality of Veterinary Expertise and the Geography of Animal Disease. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. In press.

Enticott, G. (forthcoming) Techniques of neutralising wildlife crimes in rural England and Wales. Journal of Rural Studies. In press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2011.01.005

Enticott, G. and Vanclay, F. (forthcoming) Scripts, Animal Health and Biosecurity: The Moral Accountability of Farmers’ Talk about Animal Health Risks. Health, Risk and Society. In press.

Enticott, G. (2011) Ethnographic Practices and the Practices of Biosecurity. In Blyton, P. and Franklin, A. (Eds) Researching Sustainability. Earthscan: London.

  

2010
 

Enticott, G. (2010) Everyday Ethics, In Practice, July/August 2010.

 

2009
 

Enticott, G. (2009) Pandemics, Epidemics and Endemics: The Importance of Animal Health for Environmental Policy and Planning. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 11(3): 263 — 268.

Enticott, G. and Franklin, A. (2009) Biosecurity, Expertise and the Institutional Void: The Case of Bovine Tuberculosis. Sociologia Ruralis, 49(4): 375-93. 

2008

Enticott, G. (2008) “The ecological paradox: social and natural consequences of the geographies of animal health promotion”. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33 433–446.

Enticott, G. (2008) “The spaces of biosecurity: prescribing and negotiating solutions to bovine tuberculosis” Environment and Planning A 40 1568 – 1582

Bingham, N., Enticott, G. and Hinchliffe, S. "Biosecurity: spaces, practices, and boundaries. Guest Editorial". Environment and Planning A, 1528 – 1533. With Nick Bingham and Steve Hinchliffe

Enticott, G. (2008) Biosecurity, Sound Science and the Prevention Paradox: Farmers Understandings of Animal Health. BRASS working paper no. 44. Cardiff University. 

2007

Enticott, G. "Dirty Foods, Healthy Communities? Hybridty, Rurality and the Consumption of Unpasteurised Milk in Rural England". In Cox, R. and Campkin, B. (Eds) Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination (London: IB Tauris) 168-77.

Enticott, G. and Entwistle, G. (2008) "The spaces of modernisation: Outcomes, indicators and the local government modernisation agenda". Geoforum, 38(5): 999-1011.

Entwistle, T. and Enticott, G. "Agenda-setting in Local Public Service Agreements". Policy Studies, 28(3) 193-208.

2006

Evaluation within EPC. Technical Services Division, Welsh Assembly Government. 

2005

A Case-book of Rural Innovation. Commission for Rural Communities: Cheltenham. 

2004

Researching Rural Dimensions to Local Public Service Agreements. London: Countryside Agency. With Tom Entwistle. 

2003

Enticott, G. (2003) "Risking the rural: nature, morality and the consumption of unpasteurised milk". Journal of Rural Studies, 19(4): 411-424.

Enticott, G. (2003) "Lay Immunology, Local Foods and Rural Identity: Defending Unpasteurised Milk in England". Sociologia Ruralis, 43(3): 257-270. 

2001

Enticott, G. (2001) "Calculating Nature: the case of badgers, bovine tuberculosis and cattle". Journal of Rural Studies, 17(2): 149-64. 

2000

Enticott, G. (2000) "What is rurality? Heterogeneous relations and the differentiated countryside". Swansea Geographer, 35: 71-95.

Enticott, G. (2000) "Heterogeneous ruralities: the place of nature and community in the differentiated countryside". Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cardiff University.

Veterinary Capacity

This project was funded by the Welsh Assembly Government through the Wales Rural Observatory at Cardiff University. The project runs from 2008-9 and examines the veterinary capacity and impact of the Assembly's TB Health Check.

The TB Health Check is part of the Assembly's commitment to eradicating TB. From October 2008 to December 2009 the intention is to test all cattle holdings for TB. Many of these are already tested, particularly in West Wales and Monmouth. The situation is different in north Wales where cattle herds tend to be tested only once every four years. You can see the Parish Testing Intervals for England and Wales here. This map shows the presumed location of the additional herds and cattle that would need to be tested as part of the Health Check.

The Health Check will result in approximately 3500 additional herds being tested, mostly in north Wales. Before the Health Check began, this project examined whether there would be sufficient veterinary capacity to deliver the Health Check, and attitudes towards the Health Check amongst veterinary staff. Potentially, there may not have been enough vets or time to complete the testing or vets may not have wanted to do it. Some areas of Wales may also suffer from a shortage of vets following closures of practices. This map shows the location of large animal practices in Wales and the presumed locations of the additional TB tests generated by the Health Check.

The research was completed using by analysing existing testing data from Animal Health, interviewing vets in private practice and Animal Health, and a survey of all large animal practices in Wales. Future work should be looking at the impact of the Health Check on veterinary practices.

The full results of the research so far should be published later this year.

Evaluating Biosecurity

This project was funded by the Welsh Assembly Government and involved evaluating their Biosecurity Intensive Treatment Area in West Wales which ran from 2006-2008. The project was completed with the Royal Veterinary College, ADAS, and BRASS at Cardiff University.

The Intensive Treatment Area (or ITA) was a pilot project that attempted to encourage farmers improve their levels of biosecurity. Farms in an area of West Wales were asked to participate in the project - those agreeing received two biosecurity risk assessment visits and a set of personalised biosecurity recommended actions.



The assessment visits were completed by farmers' own vet and used what was known as the 'scoring tool' - a quantitative assessment of each farms overall biosecurity risks. The scoring tool was devised by the Royal Veterinary College in partnership with the vets themselves at a series of Expert Opinion Workshops. Each participating farm was assessed early on during the ITA and given a set of recommendations. Vets then returned 9-12 months later to repeat the biosecurity measurements.

The results of the evaluation were published in October 2008 and are being used used to inform the biosecurity elements of the Welsh Assembly Government's bovine tuberculosis eradication strategy.

You can read the final report here (pdf).

You can see more about the ITA and the impressions of one of the vets involved here (ppt).

You can see reaction to the report here:

Farmers Weekly

Badger Trust (pdf)

Styles of Veterinary Regulation

This project is funded by the ESRC (Grant No: RES-000-22-2578) and runs from 2008 - 2010.


Background

The main aims of the project are to investigate the importance and practice of veterinary regulation. Veterinary practices conduct regulatory inspections on behalf of the Government, such as conducting tests for bovine tuberculosis. The burden of conducting regulatory work for the government has increased in recent years. Conducting this regulatory work can be of vital economic importance for veterinary practices in rural areas. However, there are a number of threats to the continued role of local vets in regulating animal disease such as the withdrawal of regulatory functions and deprofessionalisation (e.g. use of lay testers).

The overall objective of this project is to establish:

- The value of veterinarians in conducting animal health regulation;
- The relationship between veterinary regulation and the provision of veterinary services in rural areas.
- The core skills and expertise needed to conduct animal health regulation;

The project will take bovine tuberculosis testing as a case study of veterinary regulation/inspection. Specifically, the project has two research aims:

1) To examine the importance of veterinary regulation. Research questions include:

- How do practices benefit from conducting regulation?
- How does regulation work fit in with the provision of other farm animal veterinary services?
- How does the conduct of TB testing (regulation) fit in with the professional identity of “being a vet”?
- What “roles” do vets perform in their work and how do they manage those roles in different settings?
- How does regulation contribute to their job satisfaction?


2) To examine the practice of veterinary regulation. Research questions include:

- What are the range of skills required to effectively perform regulation?
- How and where are these skills learned? How do vets use these skills to in practice?
- How do vets communicate with farmers to ensure that regulation is effective? What sorts of communicative interaction occurs on farms? What are the communicative skills that vets possess?
- How does regulation relate to the provision of other veterinary services? Does regulation also help to resolve other animal health issues?
- What are the “styles of regulation” used by vets? How do they relate to the practice of regulation?

Previous Research - is there any?

Social scientific approaches have been used in many other policy areas to research the conduct of regulation. Previous studies have examined the styles of regulation for problems such as river pollution and food hygiene. Studies from the sociology of health have focussed on the patient-doctor relationship. Despite the importance of vets, there is little social science research that examines their regulatory role and only one study that examines the interaction between vets and their clients, although this related to companion animals.

Methodology

The project employs a comparative case study approach using qualitative methods.

As the subject of the research is veterinary regulation, the focus of the research will be on a key regulatory task for vets: that of testing for bovine tuberculosis in cattle. The study will also examine other routine veterinary work in order to compare the two types of work.

It is intended that three veterinary practices in different parts of England and Wales will be studied during the length of the research. Ethnographic methods involving participant observation will be used to workshadow vets within each of the practices as they conduct their duties.

Understanding Animal Health

This project ran from 2006-2008 and was funded by the ESRC (project no. RES-000-22-1738). The project website can be found here, and the End of Award report read here.

Background

This project built on an earlier paper that arose out of my PhD concerning the debate over the transmission of bovine tuberculosis that was published in Journal of Rural Studies. The paper focussed on the different ways in which nature was defined by the various interest groups competing to redefine policy.

Since that paper was written various events had occurred - Foot and Mouth disease for one - and policy makers and interest groups began talking more and more about the responsibilities of biosecurity. The purpose of the project was to examine the governance of biosecurity and farmers' understandings and attitudes towards biosecurity in the context of bovine tuberculosis.

Aims and Objectives

The study had three key objectives:

1. to investigate how biosecurity policies are shaped in different regulatory environments (England and Wales) and examine how they affect animal health policies.
2. to consider farmers’ understandings of biosecurity, how they learn about it, and why they accept or resist biosecurity measures by exploring farmers' social and cultural knowledges of animal disease and biosecurity measures.
3. to assess how biosecurity policies are implemented by Local Authorities, the regulatory tactics used and reasons for local variations.

Methodology

The project mostly involved interviewing with some participant observation at farms. Approxiately 60 farmers were interviewed about their views on biosecurity and bovine tuberculosis. Policy officers were interviewed from England and Wales as were members of two key biosecurity partnership groups - the TB husbandry group in England, and the Wales TB Action Group in Wales.

Findings

The main findings can be found in the end of award report. Briefly, the research argued that attempts to communicate biosecurity to farmers ignored their own culturally constructed understandings of disease (in this case bovine tuberculosis). As a result, biosecurity messages reinforced the behaviours that governments were trying to reduce. This finding is similar to those found in studies of public health communication and the study drew on theories of 'candidature' by Charlie Davison et al. The research called for greater use of social research by governments to design better methods of animal health communication.

In relation to the role of partnership, the project found that the concept of partnership had been used differently in England and Wales. Of the two partnerships, biosecurity ended up being defined in different ways according to the relative strengths of each member. In Wales, the research suggested that the partnership had a strong political direction (as is the case in many partnerships) but group members accepted this. Unlike other partnerships though, members didnt walk away from it - rather they felt they had to play along with it to ensure they were in position to influence debate when the right opporunity arose.

Publications

The main publications to arise from this research so far are:

A paper about farmers understandings of biosecurity and animal health:

“The ecological paradox: social and natural consequences of the geographies of animal health promotion”. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33 433–446.

A paper about the different versions of agricultural space deployed in arguments for and against biosecurity:

“The spaces of biosecurity: prescribing and negotiating solutions to bovine tuberculosis” Environment and Planning A, 40 1568 – 1582

Other papers are under review

The research was also featured on Farming Today and I was called as witness to the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Parliamentary Select Committee. The findings are drawn upon in their 2008 report on Bovine TB in Cattle and Badgers.

Conference Papers and Seminars

The project led to a number of conference papers and seminars in 2007-2008. You can see all of them on the page for conference papers. The key conference papers were:

“Its luck if you go clear and bad luck if you go down”: Lay Epidemiology, Candidates for Bovine Tuberculosis and the Implications for Biosecurity. Royal Geographical Society annual conference, London, August 2007.

“Biosecurity, “Sound Science” and “Partnership Decision Making”. XXII European Congress for Rural Sociology, Wageningen, Holland, August 2007 [with Alex Franklin].

Farmers’ attitudes to culling and curing badgers from bovine tuberculosis. Animals and Society II Conference, Tasmania, July, 2007.

The Spaces of Biosecurity. Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Chicago, March, 2006.