ABSTRACT
Rarely do people associate pig farming with the cityscape of Hong Kong. Hong Kong, however, has a long history of agricultural development since the British ruled the area after the First Opium War in 1842. Controlling the food supply was a crucial political maneuver for the British government to safeguard the colony’s stability and security. During the British rule, farming subsidies, technological extension services, and animal donations became the governing tactics to boost the production of vegetables, fisheries, and pigs (Chan, 2011). In 1978, China implemented an open-door policy and negotiated with the British government to export fresh food to Hong Kong. Since then, Hong Kong has depended heavily on Chinese imports of fresh vegetables, fish, and pork. This led to a dramatic decline in local food production. Recently, the desire to consume local products has increased because the public is concerned about food safety issues in China, ranging from milk powder contaminated with melamine, to recycled oil, and toxic chemical usage in the food production system. The rise and decline of agricultural activities in Hong Kong provides an opportunity to evaluate the conflicts over urban agriculture in specific time and space. There is a paucity of studies to examine why a higher value is assigned to certain forms of urban agriculture over others.1 For instance, urban vegetable farming presents a more positive aesthetic image; urban pig farming differs from other types of agriculture because of associated sanitary risks, the need for manure management, and odor issues. This study employs a political ecology perspective informed by animal geographies to examine how the meat politics in the License-Buy-Back Scheme (LBBS) has become a tactic to reduce and control the pig farming industry in Hong Kong. In order to eradicate the transmission of pig-to-human diseases and sanitary risks, governing institutions introduced the LBBS to discipline and regulate pig farming practices in 2006. A new system of sanitary norms and normative behaviors were produced to regulate farm spaces and farmers. The articulations of farm
management, record system, standardization, and animal waste treatment knowledge became the tactics to transform pig farm spaces and produce normative sanitary pig farming behaviours. The LBBS was portrayed in a government document as a program voluntarily adopted by pig farmers. This chapter argues that the sanitary discourse created a cloak to disguise the intervention of the governing institutions and produced a marginalized pig-raising environment to force farmers to relinquish their licenses. The concept of voluntarily surrendering pig farmers’ licenses should be critically revisited. To understand better the politics of the LBBS, an archival investigation was conducted during 2009-2012 to understand the social and biophysical factors which tend to restrict the pig farming industry. To engage with pig farmers in this research, the author interviewed 19 pig farmers (out of 43 operating pig farms) to understand their perceptions on the LBBS, and conducted ethnographical studies of two pig farms to triangulate archival documents with farmers’ daily practices (Shrum, 2004). This chapter begins by introducing the concept of political ecology and discusses the rationale for the governing institutions to implement the LBBS. Then the paper turns to illustrate the disciplinary techniques and political tactics in LBBS, highlighting how different stakeholders perceive these techniques. Finally, this chapter concludes by highlighting how the sanitary discourse constructs the pig farming industry as problematic and naturalizes the intervention of the governing institutions.
