Caught in the coop: local labour control regimes in poultry supply chains under avian influenza

Abstract Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) pose an escalating threat to global poultry supply chains, with their management highlighting reconfigurations in economic geography through the increasing centrality of actors and processes beyond the farm-level. Taking HPAI outbreaks in Denmark as our empirical focus, we argue that outbreaks and their management reveal poultry growers’ lack of control over the labour process. Growers organize labour regimes in struggles with requirements imposed from other capitals and the state. Combining labour regime analysis with an emphasis on classes of capital, allows us to examine how this organizing is done in constitutively different ways.