Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China’s Pandemic Epicenter by Lyle Fearnley (review)

In this exceptionally timely ethnography of avian husbandry and virological sciences in China, Lyle Fearnley answers a question that the catastrophic events of the past 14 months have rendered only more urgent: Why do viral pandemics always seem to come out of China? And what, if anything, can or should be done about it?

“Seem” is the operative word here, and Fearnley smartly evades the question of whether China really is uniquely culpable, in any normative sense, for producing zoonotic viral threats like COVID-19. Instead, using H5N1 avian influenza as a prototypical example, he explores the scientific, discursive, and social origins and ramifications of this perception of culpability. When Fearnley refers to China as a “pandemic epicenter,” he means that this country—reviled, feared, and opaque as it continues to be in the eyes of much of the global scientific community—has become the epicenter of viral imaginaries. He then sets out to peel back the layers of those imaginaries, by undertaking comprehensive ethnographic inquiries into the science, animal husbandry, social relationships, and bureaucratic machinations that are implicated in the production and dissemination of Chinese poultry and their viruses. This clearly written, scrupulously researched and compelling account should be required reading for any scholar who is serious about understanding the dynamic interplay among viruses, animals, and people that are thought to be behind the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fearnley’s account is divided into three parts: “Ecology,” “Landscape,” and “Territory.” In the first part, he traces the history of how influenza among domestic poultry came to be conceptualized as a dire threat to humans, and how Chinese duck farms and wild poultry sites came to be identified as the culprits. He considers the ways in which surveillance programs moved from laboratory to ecological landscape, breaking the bounds of carefully managed environments and leaning into the chaotic messiness of China’s bird-scapes. In Part 2, he takes readers to Poyang Lake, a freshwater lake in Jiangxi province which was identified as ground zero for the mixing and emergence of new avian virus strains. This is the part of the book where Fearnley really shows the power of ethnography to uncover critical missing pieces of epidemiological puzzles. At Poyang Lake, he discovers that the divides between commercial farms and small-scale backyard farms are not nearly as clear as they seem. Strict biosecurity blends together with casual kin-like relationships between farmers and poultry in ways that seem to elude both scientists and bureaucrats. In a chapter aptly entitled “Wild Goose Chase,” the lines between wild and domestic birds blend together as well. This raises the question—which he picks up again in a postscript written in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak—of how calls to eliminate the wildlife trade as a pandemic prevention measure can possibly be accomplished when it is not at all clear what counts as “wild,” or what farmers and scientists even mean by that word.

Part 3, which digs into the training of veterinarians in China and the machinations of domestic and global animal health bureaucracies, serves as a helpful addendum to similar work on human health in China and beyond. Here Fearnley shows that many of the transformations that China’s (human) public health system underwent in the Mao period, early reform period, and post-SARS period were also mirrored in the animal health sector, with similar benefits and drawbacks. As professionalization efforts raised the educational pedigrees of veterinary officials in the 21st century, their connections to the animals and farmers they served weakened, to the detriment of animal health and pandemic preparedness efforts. What resulted was an advanced science that was increasingly incapable of meeting—or even understanding—the needs of the local agricultural sector.

The conclusion to the book, which was written shortly before the arrival of COVID-19, is eerily prescient to read. Beginning with news of an outbreak of avian...