Infrastructural Ecologies of the Mongolia-China Meat Trade

Dr Thomas White will examine the geopolitical ecologies of meat export from Mongolia to China. This will involve ethnographic research based at a meat company in Ulaanbaatar with an export license to China, and the rural producers who supply this company. White will examine how this company navigates two sources of instability: Mongolia’s geopolitical relationship with China, and the ecologies of animal health on Mongolia’s grasslands. White’s research will enquire into the ways in which economic relations are built by this company across the Sino-Mongolian border, while also looking at how the company ensures that the meat which is sourced from herders complies with the standards necessary for export to China, and how the implementation of digital traceability systems is affecting rural producers. White’s research will thus develop his longstanding interest in human-animal relations and pastoralism by asking how animal health is managed, such that herds are kept free from epizootics such as foot and mouth disease, in order to allow their meat to be exported. These ethnographic questions will allow White to explore the ways in which livelihoods in Mongolia are being reconfigured by meat export, and by the regimes of standards (food safety and biosecurity) which undergird the transnational food trade.