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
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