Zenia Taluja

In India’s fast-growing poultry sector, broiler chickens reach slaughter weight in just 35 days, aided by antibiotics used for disease prevention and growth acceleration. However, as the country becomes recognised as ‘the reservoir’ of antibiotic resistance (ABR), a crisis that renders these miracle drugs obsolete, the infrastructure sustaining poultry production is being questioned. In response, India’s veterinary sector–central to managing animal health–is being tasked with reimagining its role through the language of appropriate use and the promise of ethnoveterinary medicine. In 2024, national guidelines encouraged veterinarians to integrate Ayurvedic and herbal remedies into livestock care, signalling a policy turn toward alternative medicine for industrial animals. This project investigates how veterinary science and ethnoveterinary medicine encounter each other in the broiler chicken industry in Kerala, a state at the forefront of India’s One Health agenda. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic and historical research across farms, labs, and research and policy institutions, the project rethinks industrial agriculture not only as a techno-economic formation, but as a shifting scientific and epistemic terrain. It positions India as a crucial site for studying the entanglement of science and industry in the making of agrarian and microbial futures.