History from Farmyard to Factory
Paul R. Josephson
polity
Copyright © Paul R. Josephson 2020
The right of Paul R. Josephson to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2020 by Polity Press
Polity Press
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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2594-2
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Josephson, Paul R., author.
Title: Chicken : a history from farmyard to factory / Paul R. Josephson.
Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “The irresistible rise and fall of the world’s favourite farm animal”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019045569 (print) | LCCN 2019045570 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509525911 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509525942 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Broilers (Chickens)--History. | Factory farms.
Classification: LCC SF498.7 .J67 2020 (print) | LCC SF498.7; (ebook) | DDC 636.5--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045569 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045570
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Dedication
For Isaac, Nina and Emile
They bring smiles to the table,but only one is a vegetarian.
Acknowledgments
A number of people helped in writing this book, and thank you to all of them. Colby College provided financial support for Chicken with a travel grant, and my students in the lecture “Luddite Rantings” responded to my lectures on broilers with well-seasoned questions. I presented early thoughts on chicken at the “Consuming the World: Eating and Drinking in Culture, History, and Environment” workshop at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany, in March 2016, and thank the organizers Michelle Mart, Dan Philippon and Hanna Schösler for inviting me to participate and learn about food from them and the other participants. Deborah Fitzgerald read the draft of the paper from the conference and shared her broad knowledge on agriculture, technology and industry. My editor at Polity, Pascal Porcheron, has been supportive during the entire process; his in-depth comments and suggestions make this book stronger. The two anonymous reviewers offered excellent suggestions on how to raise, shape, cut and bread my writing. Indiana Jones, Lego-master and friend, again assembled a superior index. Willie “Pops” Stargell and Roberto Clemente, as always, provided inspiration to move ahead when the hunting and pecking got tough. Pops was especially instrumental in motivating this book. He owned a chicken restaurant in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, and any customer in the restaurant got free chicken when Stargell hit a home run. Bob Prince, the Pirate radio announcer, came to announce Stargell home runs with the yell “Chicken on the Hill with Will.” Willie took me to a baseball game when I was 13 at Forbes Field. Thank you, Willie. Tatiana Kasperski ate chicken with me when I prepared it, cooked chicken for me, added it to kholodnik, listened to my ideas and plucked them carefully. Thank you, Tanya.
The publishers would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce the images:
Frontispiece: Gamborg Gallery, Moscow, Russia; figure 1, bariskarad eniz/ istock; 2, Nastasic/ istock; 3, Alf Ribeiro/ Shutterstock; 4, travelview/ istock; 5: Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division; 6, zilli/ istock; 7, Africa Studio/ Shutterstock; 8, bluebird13/ istock; 9: Gloszilla Studio / shutterstock; 10, N-sky/ istock; 11, Photoagriculture/ shutterstock; 12, : ben/ Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/16693144@N00/2512789670); 13, https://www.tvc.ru/news/show/id/57784#gid=gid_57784_0&pid=142286; 14, M M (Padman aba01)/ Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chicken_market_in_Xining,_Qinghai_province,_China.jpg); 15, TommL/ istock.
“Ryaba, the Hen,” Maria Uspenskaya (1987).
Introduction: Egg First
I must have been hungry,
I ate another chicken.
With my hands
and noticed at the chicken dinner,
that I had eaten a
Cold and dead chicken.
– Gunter Grass, “Saturn”1
Sometime in the early 2000s, when traveling abroad, I noticed a different taste in the fresh chicken distributed in the European Union (EU) from that delivered to the supermarket in the United States. One could say that US poultry left a bad taste in my mouth. Equally, one could say that there’s no accounting for taste. To answer my taste confusion, I commenced investigation of how meat chickens are produced and delivered to stores. That olfactory and gustatory journey resulted in
