From Documents to Dairies: The Emerging Role of Livestock Veterinarians in the Multispecies Health Issue of Antimicrobial Resistance

Abstract

Matters of health and care in the age of the Anthropocene blur divisions between humans and our nonhuman companions, inciting new ways of understanding and managing this intense interspecies traffic. This thesis investigates emerging practices of knowing and governing contemporary matters of multispecies health, focusing on the role of livestock veterinarians in the public health issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR)—where our life-saving antibiotics are losing their efficacy. Industrial systems of livestock production have amplified AMR by relying on antibiotics for decades to bolster intensive production settings that foster disease. As AMR becomes an object of increasing scientific and political concern, the U.S. government recently implemented regulatory changes to increase the veterinarian’s responsibility and control over antibiotic use on farms. I follow the intricacies and implications of this governmental response to AMR, combining analysis of regulatory documents with interviews and participant observation with veterinarians working on dairy farms in California. As actors embedded within social, political, and economic settings of livestock production with a certain biomedical expertise, veterinarians have particular constraints and capacities to reduce agricultural dependencies on antibiotics. I explore how veterinarians navigate their emerging role in AMR governance while caring for animals that are at once commodities, vulnerable creatures, and participants in shared microbial ecologies. In doing so, I aim to contribute to burgeoning scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that investigates matters of multispecies health and care in a world reconfigured by our antibiotic means of controlling life.