Chicken from the soil: qualifying local chicken amidst food distrust in southwestern China

Chinese consumers value the so-called tuji chicken (‘soil + chicken’) as a local, quality type of poultry. Because tu references both local region and the rural countryside, the tu chicken evokes a contrast with modern improved broilers and the globalized poultry industry, and exemplifies a broader ‘quality turn’ in China’s agri-food system. But what precisely makes a chicken tu (‘local’ and ‘earthy’), and how to identify one that is, are more uncertain and contested questions. Building on literature in food studies, anthropology and geography that unpacks the social construction of definitions of local and quality food, this paper argues that struggles over the definition of the tu chicken are closely linked with consumer strategies for authenticating these definitions in practice. Interviews and fieldwork observations with consumers, poultry vendors and farmers in southwestern China show significant variation in how the tu chicken is defined. But in a context where China’s food safety scandals have produced a climate of food distrust, consumers are as interested in techniques of qualifying or evaluating whether or not particular chickens are tu, as they are in contesting or constructing the abstract definition of tu chickens.