Assessing life and assembling economies in the production of antibiotic-free broilers

Rising public concern about antibiotics in food production has led the broiler (chicken) industry in the United States to adopt antibiotic-free production methods. Instead of producing one kind of antibiotic-free chicken, a variety of antibiotic-free forms of production have emerged. Why did a diversity of antibiotic-free chickens emerge? Crucial to producing this variegated shift in production are practices of assessment and categorization along the broiler commodity chain. Three practices in particular – antibiotic-free labels, drug classifications and the feed conversion ratio – produce multiple ways of understanding what it means to be antibiotic free. An examination of these practices in the broiler industry reveals that these practices are more than ways to understand broilers, but also create the conditions where broilers can become objects of market exchange. They do so by demarcating points of inclusion and exclusion that allow for the economic subject positions of consumers, producers and intermediaries to emerge. In this way, epistemic practices around assessing broilers are themselves market-making interventions and create the conditions that determine what a broiler can be. Understanding the role of assessments in creating a variety of antibiotic-free broilers highlights the contingent nature of economic action and reveal a delicate process where both the broiler itself, and economic action towards the broiler, are produced together.