Protecting place: Norway, spatial imaginaries, and the governance of antimicrobial resistant bacteria in pig and poultry farming

Abstract

Norway has undertaken specific governance measures to eradicate and control MRSA and ESBL E. coli, two AMR bacterium, in pigs and poultry respectively. These measures are unique in the context of AMR governance in Europe and globally, and extend AMR governance in agriculture beyond a focus on reducing antibiotics use, towards direct efforts to control the prevalence of two AMR bacteria of concern. Based on interviews with public health, animal health, and agricultural industry organisations, this article contributes to a growing body of literature examining practices and policies of AMR governance and work on the intersection between spatial imaginaries and AMR governance. The article specifically analyses the different discursive dimensions of a dominant spatial imaginary encompassing Norway as a protective, protected and purifiable space. Within this context, AMR bacteria, as a wicked problem eluding human boundaries and barriers, is imagined as being directly actionable because the Norwegian agriculture and its spatial vulnerabilities are positioned as sufficiently stabilised that they can now be controlled. Broader agricultural and AMR governance arrangements in turn work to sustain social and material barriers to new AMR bacteria (re-)entering Norway. This sustained mode of action has arguably succeeded in reshaping Norwegian agriculture to the exclusion of these AMR bacterium from pigs and poultry. These efforts reinforce the spatial imaginary and protectionist regulatory practices that sustain Norway as a protected place.