Agricultural History Review, Volume 60 Part 2 (2012), p. 320

This is a beautiful but powerful book. One of the latest in the Reaktion series on animals, it is richly illustrated, with some beautiful reproductions of paintings and pottery, as well as many photographs. But the author’s purpose is far more than to produce the content for another consumer good. Rather, as the first sentence on the back cover blurb states, Annie Potts wants to show readers that ‘No creature has been subjected to such extremes of reverence and exploitation as the chicken’.

Reverence first. The book begins with a summary of the natural history of the chicken, tracing the prehistoric and genetic evidence for the species’ geographic dispersal around the globe. The ‘hen craze’ of the nineteenth century saw new breeds emerge, using selective breeding techniques, the Cornish, White Leghorn and Plymouth Rock breeds (the mainstays of the modern population) emerging then. Chapter Two surveys the evidence of chicken intelligence and social habits, emphasizing that the domesticated chicken, like all domesticated animals, is a highly intelligent species. Chapter Three then examines the relationship between the chicken and human religious worship. While we may all be familiar with the prominence of the chicken in Christianity (Jesus referring to his compassion for Jerusalem as a mother hen for her chicks; Easter Eggs celebrating his resurrection), and perhaps in Jewish practice (the Sabbath chicken), surely few readers will be aware of the remarkable presence of the chicken in other world faiths: in Ancient Chinese Shinto and Buddhism, in Ancient Greece and Hindu worship, as well as others, both eggs and roosters have had widespread significance. Chapter Four then summarizes some of the cultural references to chickens in literature and film in the twentieth century, where Potts suggests that prior to the industrialization of chicken farming, the bird’s depiction in popular culture was balanced, but that since the development of the broiler industry, the chicken has become trivialized. This is a neat hypothesis, but one which needs to be tested. Equally, her assertion about chicken meat being relatively feminized (compared with red meat) and so a lower status, because chicken farming was largely the responsibility of the farmer’s wife, is plausible. But there are many equally plausible alternative explanations for the long-term preference for red meat.

The most powerful chapter in the book is Chapter Six, which focuses on the industrialization of chicken farming. While falling short of outright polemic, the author’s sympathies are clearly with the bird, not the human consumers of its meat and eggs. Over 50 billion chickens are slaughtered each year for meat, almost ten per person on the planet; yet consumers are largely ignorant of the processes that convert live beings into meat on a supermarket shelf. If consumers were fully cognizant, it is truly debatable whether they would continue to accept the relegation of the chicken’s status to a mere commodity. Yet humans want to eat meat; indeed, the richer they get, the more they opt to eat. Increasing global population and living standards add up to more meat being eaten around the world. And poultry meat is the healthiest, the most economical and the most environmentally friendly form of animal protein for human consumption. As consumers we may prefer to ignore such ethical dilemmas, but in the end we cannot. The book’s greatest service will be that it will add to those works that seek to bring such currently hidden activities out into the open.