Assembling the team of 5 million: Socio-technical relations in Aotearoa-New Zealand’s biosecurity system

Abstract

Aotearoa-New Zealand’s “team of 5 million” is frequently mobilised to defend the nation’s borders from the biological threats posed by pests, pathogens and weeds. While this need for a team approach has been central to the recent Covid-19 pandemic response, it has been evident in biosecurity policy for some years, as exemplified by the Biosecurity 2025 strategy: Ko Tātou/This is us. But in addition to the ongoing focus on people, there is an ever-increasing array of technologies that are being developed to meet biosecurity goals. Through an examination of the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) scheme, I will conceptualise Aotearoa-New Zealand’s “team of 5 million” as an assemblage of social and technical elements. In doing so I will also consider how biosecure borders do not simply exist at the periphery of the nation state, but are made and remade at sites within the its territorial boundaries.