Monday, March 7, 2016

February book report by Jason

February 2016-Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?, by Andrew Lawler

This book was a fascinating and absorbing romp through archaeological, anthropological, historical, cultural, biological, philosophical, ethical, behavioral, and political realms of study, all within the context of trying to understand what the chicken is in itself, where it comes from, how it came to be as it is, and what it has meant to us and what it means to us today.  The following quote from page 148 is the best general summary of our history with the bird:

“Amid familiar mammals like dogs and cats and cows, however, the chicken retains an almost alien quality.  The male can be fierce and even terrifying when defending its turf, all out of proportion with its small size, while the bird’s reptilian feet and downy feathers make for an unsettling combination.  Jerky movements give the bird a disturbingly robotic quality, while its voracious appetite for sex with multiple partners is impressive to some adn offensive to others.  We veer between admiration and disgust and between fascination and fear in our long relationship with the chicken.  This ambivalence mirrors our shifting attitudes toward God, sex, gender, and all that we consider both sensual and monstrous.” (Lawler, 148)

There were a few surprises with regard to its role in human society and history, particularly American history:

“ 'Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century descriptions of colonial foodways ignored the chicken for the most part,’ says the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.  For enslaved African Americans, this humble status proved a welcome boon.  In 1692, after several individuals bought their freedom with profits from animal sales, the Virginia General Assembly made it illegal for slaves to own horses, cattle, and pigs.  Masters often forbade their human chattel from hunting, fishing, or growing tobacco.  The chicken ‘is the only pleasure allowed to Negroes; they are not permitted to keep either ducks or geese or pigs,’ one visitor to George Washington’s Mount Vernon remarked.” (Lawler 193)

“If your goal is to build a more egalitarian society, then chickens are the perfect livestock.” (Lawler 186)

The sporadic surges in interest in backyard poultry, sometimes quite frivolous, show up in surprising places like Queen Victoria’s gardens and swanky 21st century catalogs:

“Upscale Neiman Marcus recently offered a hundred-thousand-dollar chicken coop, complete with chandelier and heritage birds, as its ultimate extravagant gift.  ‘We’ll hold the future farmer’s hand as we teach how to raise a healthy flock, to compost from hen house to garden bed, grow veggies and herbs for their table and flock, sprout legumes, fodder and rotate pasture trays, and experience the reward of permaculture,’ says the designer.” (Lawler 260)

Those of us who pay attention to questions of animal cruelty and welfare will not be surprised to hear about the fates of industrial chickens, but it bears mentioning:

“In the United States alone, more than 200 million young roosters are killed each year.  In many documented cases, they were tossed live into Dumpsters or fed into wood chippers.” (Lawler 168)

“Leg and hip ailments brought on by inadequate bone structure hinder health in an animal designed to put on meat so fast the developing skeleton can’t keep up.  Some broilers can’t walk to their water and feed stations, and there are signs that large numbers are in chronic pain.  One study showed that broilers learned to self-administer a pain reliever by choosing feed containing the drug over food that lacked it.” (Lawler 217)

“Within a year or two, a typical laying hen is spent.  ‘We selected chickens to lay eggs at the expense of their own bodies,’ says Siegford.  ‘You won’t see a physically healthy hen at the end of her laying cycle no matter what nirvana you put her in.  Her body is driving her to lay eggs.’  No matter how many perches, dust-bathing mats, or open space are provided to hens, the genetics of the bird works against its welfare.  And once their laying days are over, there are no laws governing their destruction, and the hens have almost no economic value except as fertilizer or pet food.” (Lawler 248)

This is especially disturbing when we learn more about their cognitive abilities:

p. 240: “And chicks can do more then add and subtract.  They can understand geometry, recognize faces, retain memories, and make logical deductions that Vallortigara insists exceed the capabilities of some of his graduate students.  Other neuroscientists are finding that chickens practice self-control, alter their message to fit the receiver, and, in some instances, can feel empathy.  Some of these cognitive abilities equal or surpass those of assorted primates, and it is possible that the chicken possesses a primitive self-consciousness.”

Industrialists have only taken interest in chickens in the last handful of decades, but their affects have been staggering and swift, locally and abroad:

p. 222: “Driving down Delmarva’s highways and back roads, I don’t see a single chicken…as chickens have become more numerous, they paradoxically have become less visible.”

p. 212: “A few livestock experts expressed alarm at the pace of change. ‘Modern science…threatens to become dogma,’ warned one in 1960. ‘The scientist might well be advised to go occasionally to the farmyard to learn rather than to teach, or what is far less excusable, to preach.’  The new approach to poultry, he added, was being applied ‘too uncritically and with too great haste.’

p. 250: “In the 1970s, Western aid agencies introduced the Rhode Island Red and other varieties of industrial chickens that quickly died off, but not before mixing with the local birds.  The resulting hybrids lacked tolerance for the tropical diseases and local flocks were decimated.  Ommeh is searching for those few Kenyan birds with enough indigenous genes to survive dry spells and avian illnesses endemic to the country.  ‘Making sure they are disease and drought tolerant is more important than talking about their meat productivity,’ she says.  ‘And we have to move fast or it will be too late.’

p. 252: “The Ho are among the last of the world’s ancient chicken varieties.  Western heritage breeds and the modern industrial chicken are descendants of the nineteenth-century British and American hen fevers.  Village fowl like the Ho, by contrast, date back many centuries and even millennia.  Vietnam alone has sixteen distinct chicken breeds that account for three out of every four chickens raised in the country.  As industrial broilers and layers proliferate around the world, these village birds are quietly disappearing…as they vanish, diverse and useful traits cultivated by local breeders over thousands of chicken generations will be lost.”

p. 255: “Growing birds in enclosed and isolated facilities that strictly limit their contact with anything on the outside, such as ducks, pigs, and humans, reduces the risk of deadly species-to-species transmission.  That fact encourages governments to back large and centralized poultry operations in the name of public health…some researchers suspect that the fast-growing industrial-poultry business has also played a role in the crisis, since the virus spread at the same time that the industry began to expand.”

There were many reasons for a would-be chicken breeder of functional and well-adjusted homestead fowl to be discouraged about the prospects for “success” at this endeavor.  The economic tide is not in our favor at the moment.  But tides shift, and it was evident that on the margins, particularly in the developing world, there are creative and intelligent professionals and individuals who see the value in keeping diversity alive and well for chickens and for the people they are partnered with around the world.  I felt meaningful connection with these tidbits from the edges of the main stories, especially the edges of the dominant modern story of maximum poultry product for minimum grain, which is at once the most alarming and the most tediously boring part of the whole history of the chicken.  I wish everyone who eats chicken products would take time to read this book.  Were that magically possible I am not naïve enough to think our problem would be solved, but the upshot of all those opened eyes would be a greatly broadened opportunity at the healthy end of the chicken farming spectrum and a change in the tone of the conversation (largely silent at the moment) regarding our dependence on this fascinating organism.

by Jason Myers-Benner February 2016

No comments:

Post a Comment