Chicken: A History from Farmyard to Factory by Paul R. Josephson (review)

This book is eminently readable, with many neat turns of phrase and even puns, but this should not, and above all does not, disguise the fact that it recounts a horrifying story of cruelty and exploitation, with Homo sapiens as the villain. It is the history of the chicken—or more particularly the broiler, from forest to farmyard to bondage—and a sad history it makes.

It tells the story of an animal with endearing traits that used to have a deep relationship with humankind and played a prominent role in our life and literature (Queen Victoria was a particular admirer); they are compact, lightweight, and easy to transport and feed—because of their ability to peck away at the ground. But then in the 20th century, factory farming turned chickens from backyard scratchers to industrial meat products. Never has the chicken been further from humankind. The vast majority of people see chickens only as the cheap, anaemic products they find wrapped in cellophane in the local supermarket, not as the characterful sentient beings they really are. They have become genetically formed “meat machines,” deprived of fresh air and freedom to range, designed to satisfy an ever-growing appetite for meat and protein. The ubiquitous nugget has no connection with an animal living a normal, natural life.

Josephson explains how this has come about. This is the work of entrepreneurs, breed scientists (who have created birds with meatier breasts and thighs), ruthless financiers, lobbyists, and Big Pharma. They have created this dystopian form of capitalism. Factory farms maximize output from well-controlled—and minimal—inputs. Chicks and ill-paid workers, often immigrants, are inputs; so are feed, fossil fuels, machinery, and antibiotics. Farming has been made an industry, and the animals are no more than units of production: “The broiler is a prisoner in a technological panopticon, with no prospect of hunting, pecking and roosting as chickens normally hunt, peck and roost” (p. 3). The figures are staggering, and appalling. Broilers live no more than 7 weeks. Fifty-three billion are killed annually for their meat. Americans consumed, in one day, 1.3 billion chicken wings during the broadcast of the 2018 Super Bowl alone.

And, as Josephson makes clear, equally staggering and appalling are the (hitherto largely hidden) consequences of factory farming. Not just the endemic (and specie-sist) cruelty inherent in the system, but also the damage to biodiversity; the destruction of the environment (pollution of rivers and poisoning of animals: 1 kilogram of chicken meat produces 500 grams of fecal matter); the misuse of antibiotics (given to factory-farmed animals to reduce losses from infectious diseases due to overcrowding—with serious consequences for the efficacy of antibiotics on human beings); and the public costs of combatting obesity and cleaning up after pollution—both the consequences of (not so) cheap meat. Josephson writes, “Nowhere in the world has the pollution problem been solved,” and adds, “If you need to use medicine in the production of meat, then is this not prima facie evidence that there is something wrong with the system?” (p. 11). In writing this section, Josephson pays full tribute to the writers whose works have already voiced concerns on all these issues, including Ruth Harrison’s Animal Machines (1964)—the animal welfare equivalent of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962).

As the author points out, we have reached a crisis point. This is even truer now than when he wrote those words. COVID-19 had not then appeared on the scene. But repeated bouts of highly pathogenic avian influenza such as H5N1 had, and the trend was clear. Unless we change our ways on factory farming, the next pandemic will not be far away—the darkened and overcrowded conditions providing the breeding ground for new and more deadly strains of disease. The United Nations and the European Union are taking a lead on addressing...