Cooped: Avian Influenza and Ritual of Mass Culling in China

Abstract

As reservoirs of avian influenza, birds have become the primary focus of the origin of infection. In particular, Chinese poultry farms and markets have become the object of draconian public health interventions in the form of mass-culling - most recently with the discovery of the H7N9 virus and the threat of animal to human spillovers. In 2013, thousands of chickens were slaughtered in Hangzhou and Shanghai, where infected birds were identified. This paper considers representations of such mass-cullings in the Western media: it explores the ways in which images of 'diseased' chickens have been contextually framed, and examines the interrelationship between slaughtered birds and the unseen bodies of the virus's human victims.