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BackgroundThis paper explores the current role and place of diagnostic tests in the treatment of farm animal disease. With the growing focus on reduced reliance on antibiotic medicines in both animal and human patient care, attention is increasingly being focused on the practice, the technology and the function of diagnostic tests and how these can support responsible antimicrobial use. Emerging diagnostic technologies offer the possibility of more rapid testing for bacterial disease, while food chain actors and others are increasingly seeking to make diagnostic tests mandatory before the use of critically important antibiotics.MethodThis paper reports the findings of a recent large-scale online survey of UK farm animal veterinarians (n=153) which investigated current veterinary diagnostic practice with particular attention to the relationship between diagnostic test use and antibiotic treatment.ResultsResults revealed a range of factors that influence veterinary diagnostic practice and demonstrate the continuing importance of clinical observation and animal/herd knowledge in the selection of antibiotic treatment.ConclusionThe findings identify a considerable ambivalence on the part of farm animal veterinarians regarding the current and future uses of rapid and point-of-care diagnostic tests as a means of improving clinical diagnosis and addressing inappropriate antibiotic medicine use.

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Definitions of biosecurity typically include generalised statements about how biosecurity risks on farms should be managed and contained. However, in reality, on-farm biosecurity practices are uneven and transfer differently between social groups, geographical scales and agricultural commodity chains. This paper reviews social science studies that examine on-farm biosecurity for animal health. We first review behavioural and psychosocial models of individual farmer behaviour/decisions. Behavioural approaches are prominent in biosecurity policy but have limitations because of a focus on individual farmer behaviour and intentions. We then review geographical and rural sociological work that emphasises social and cultural structures, contexts and norms that guide disease behaviour. Socio-cultural approaches have the capacity to extend the more commonly applied behavioural approaches and contribute to the better formulation of biosecurity policy and on-farm practice. This includes strengthening our understanding of ‘good farming' identity, tacit knowledge, farmer influence networks, and reformulating biosecurity as localised practices of care. Recognising on-farm biosecurity as practices of biosecure farming care offers a new way of engaging, motivating and encouraging farmers to manage and contain diseases on farm. This is critical given government intentions to devolve biosecurity governance to the farming industry.

Rural modernization in China has been profound as the countryside has moved from agricultural production to industrial and tertiary industry development. Within rural areas these changes can have enormous significance for how we think about their sustainability. One rural county that vividly illustrates both the challenges and opportunities of rural development is Anji in Zhejiang Province in Eastern China. Anji is held up as a model of rural sustainable development. In this paper we analyse the basis for the sustainability claims made of Anji and to do so, we examine how the production and processing of bamboo materials transformed Anji into a place-specific bamboo-making locality that is lauded for its sustainability. We analyse how thinking on a place and a material (bamboo) come together to reinforce thinking on sustainability in rural China. We then go on to critically question the politico-economic arrangements that construct Anji and bamboo as models of sustainability. We argue that whilst both Anji and bamboo do have notable features that characterise them as sustainable and together can make an even more persuasive case for rural sustainability, a more detailed analysis allows us to uncover the deep-rooted tensions that persist in Chinese rural development between environmental protection and economic growth. The paper draws on a mixture of published and unpublished material to provide a detailed examination of the ways in which bamboo supply chains operate within and through Anji. The paper concludes that local constructions of sustainability are driven by economic rather than environmental values.