Poultry to the People: A Biography of the Chicken

Ben Kopp

The consumption of domesticated livestock has always been a part of our history,

whether eating pork, beef, or poultry. Despite the chicken being very popular in today’s society,

it was not always so. The chicken is now incredibly important part of the human diet, but has a

long and rich history. In this paper I hope to cover the history of the domesticated chicken

adequately, as well as what the chicken industry looks like today.

The history of the chicken dates back to approximately 4000 years ago, around the year

2000 BC. (Derry 12) It was originally descended from the red jungle fowl in Southeast Asia.

(Time Life Editors 5) In the time of the invasion of the Indus valley around the year 1500 BC,

the chicken was used mainly for ceremonial slaughters, although it was sometimes consumed

afterwards. After this the chicken was taken to Persia, and then brought to Mesopotamia. Around

the late sixth century BC, they were brought to Greece, again just for sport and ceremonial

purposes. At this time only the poor consumed Chicken meat, not the wealthy. (Derry 12)

From its influence in Greece and Persia, the chicken travelled south to North Africa, and

west to Southern Italy. It was at this period of history, in Italy, that there was the first evidence of

breeding the chicken for food, which was done by the Romans in Italy. They realized that they

could use the chicken to supply armies because it could be transported very easily. They created

a heavy bird which they used for meat, as well as a lighter bird which they used for egg laying.

The Romans also played a role in introducing the chicken to Europe. However, there is evidence

that it was there in pre-Roman times. (Derry 12) For example, when Julius Caesar arrived in

Britain in 55 BC, cock fights were popular, but the consumption of chicken meat in Britain was
forbidden under Druidical law. While the Romans did bring the chicken to Europe, after the fall

of Rome, interest in breeding chickens in Europe dwindled into a long period of disinterest. It

was like this all the way until the thirteenth century, when a marketing system for eggs and

poultry meat had developed in Britain. At this time they were mainly valued for their meat, not

the eggs they laid. They were considered a luxury and were used as fighting birds. (Derry 13)

The Chicken arrived in the new world as early as the conquest period, when the Spanish

introduced the chicken to South America. Domestic poultry was brought to the British holding in

present day America as early as 1609. At this time settlers kept the birds for self-sufficient

purposes, not commercial purposes. In fact, in the period of history the main purpose

commercially for chickens was to use their feathers for mattresses and pillows. (Derry 15) For

new settlers in Ontario at this time, wild birds met all requirements for eggs and meat. Predators,

disease and the sub-zero temperatures of Canadian winters made the raising and breeding of

chickens impractical. (Leeson 7) Cock fighting was very popular at this time as well, and would

remain popular for many years. In fact, it was not until August of 2008 that cock fighting

actually became illegal in the state of Louisiana. (Leeson 7)

By the eighteenth century in Britain, there was an effort to make livestock production

more efficient, due to the increasing demand caused by a rise in population. An important figure

in this change was Robert Bakewell, a British agriculturalist. His ideals toward breeding as a

whole, specifically the ideology of selective breeding, played a part in the commercialization of

chickens in the eighteenth century. (Derry 16) This desire for increased emphasis on systemized

chicken breeding continued throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century. After 1850 the

chicken was thought less of just a barnyard scavenger and a rise began to find more

organizational ways of breeding, as well as the establishment of differing breeding systems, and
the societal structure within breeding took place. (Derry 34) As well as this there was a rise in

the commercial industry for eggs. For example, in 1863 in New York, eggs reached the city from

places like Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota. Just over ten years later, in 1874, they were

being delivered to New York from places as far away as Canada and Mexico. (Derry 57)

Well into the twentieth century however, chickens as source of meat and eggs played a

minor role in the American diet and economy. Even after the beef and pork industry entered a

more industrialized era with advanced slaughterhouses, the production of chicken remained

something more casual. There was a sense of community and locality with chicken production at

this time. (Lawler, Adler) Another reason for this was that chickens needed sunlight to absorb

vitamin D, which is necessary for their growth. Because of this, for the first few decades of the

twentieth century, chickens would wander outside around the barnyard. The breakthrough that

eventually became today’s multi-million dollar industry, where we can find giant warehouses

packed with thousands of chickens, came from the development of an indoor environment where

chickens could be fed with the fortification of feed with antibiotics and vitamins. The

introduction of the factory farm has turned the chicken from a smaller enterprise, to the large

scale industrial machine that it is today. (Lawler, Adler)

 Figure 1 Chicken consumption in 2012 (Stiftung)

In developed countries now, the consumption of chicken is surpassing beef. The process

of producing poultry meat is now highly industrialized, and demand is higher than ever. Demand

is especially high in Asia, as people who refuse to eat pork and beef will in large part opt for

chicken instead. (Stiftung 40) Chicken is the fastest growing and most quickly changing of the

livestock industry; an industry which has become highly globalized in the last few decades. By

the year 2020, 124 million tonnes of poultry will be produced globally, which is an obscene

increase of 25 percent in just ten years. This rise in production will be the largest in China and

Brazil. Growth in Asia in general will be massive, and is expected to be seven times its

production now by the year 2050. This is in large part due to demand in India, where eating

chicken is becoming increasingly popular. According to the food and agriculture organization of

the United Nations, the cause of this massive increase is not a product of the earth’s rising

population, but because the amount of chicken we are consuming per capita is increasing.

(Stiftung 40)
 The increase in the popularity of chicken as a main source of food in your diet is due to a

number of reasons. First, in comparison to other types of meat such as beef and pork, chicken is

much cheaper. This is especially important in less developed, poorer nations, where cheaper food

is much more popular. Second, there are fewer religious and cultural limitations to the way that

chicken is prepared. Third, they have the most efficient feed converters compared to any other

livestock. (Stiftung 41) It only takes less than two pounds of feed to produce on pound of

chicken, which is less than half of what that number looked like in 1945. In comparison with

other livestock, it takes more than three pounds of feed to yield one pound of pork, and around

seven pounds to produce a pound of beef. In the town of Edgecomb, Maine, poultry farmer Gary

Balducci can turn a newly hatched chick into a five pound, full sized chicken in six weeks.

(Lawler, Adler)
Figure 2 Map showing the increased amount of chickens (Stiftung)

There is a trend of smaller slaughter locations and retailers being phased out and rendered

obsolete by fewer, larger slaughterhouses and retail outlets. This is in large part due to the

demand of fast food outlets like Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald’s, making a shift from

small scale production to large scale production. Between the years of 1985 and 2005, 70 million

smaller independent chicken producers exited the market. In 1998, farms that had fewer than

2000 birds made up 62 percent of the country’s chickens. In 2009 however, that number had

decreased down to 30 percent. Mass production farms that have an annual output of 100 million
birds or more rose from two percent of a country’s production in 1998, to over six percent in

2009. (Stiftung 40)

This shift from small scale operations to large scale operations means that is harder now

to regard food safety and regulations. An example of this was in 2012, a Chinese national

television network exposed that the chicken coming from Liuhe had been using more than 18

antibiotics. These antibiotics had been mixed into the feed of the chickens in order to accelerate

the growth of the birds, therefore drastically accelerating production. The scandal was

appropriately dubbed the “instant chicken” scandal. Liuhe is one of the top providers for

Kentucky Fried Chicken. Kentucky Fried Chicken’s parent company, Yum brands, had no other

choice to admit that there had been excessive residues of these harmful antibiotics found in

“some of the poultry” supplied by Liuhe. This is just one example of the dangers of factory

farming chickens. The Worldwide trend of consuming chickens is that all poultry markets and

processing facilities are being shifted into less and larger companies, that are beginning to gain

control of massive amounts of chickens. This change in the industry will affect everyone whose

career revolves around the production and consumption of chicken, as well as the quality of the

chicken that the consumers will eat. (Stiftung 42)

 Figure 3 The rising numbers of poultry (Stiftung)

Culturally, chicken is an international food. It is found almost everywhere around the

world, and in every country where chicken exists as a part of the diet, it has inspired dozens of

recipes all made with local ingredients. For example, in Italian culture, they sauté the chicken

with tomatoes, mushrooms and wine to make a dish called poolo alla cacciatora. In Japanese

culture, they deep fry chicken pieces that have been marinated in ginger, soy sauce and rice wine

to produce a dish called toriniku no tatsuta-age. (Time Life Editors 5) In the words of the

nineteenth century French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, “Poultry is for the cook

what the canvas is to the painter. It is served to us boiled, roasted, fried, hot or cold, whole or in

pieces, with or without sauce, boned, skinned, stuffed, and always with equal success”. (Time

Life Editors 5)

Chicken also has a more light-hearted place in our society as well. For instance, the idea

of a “chicken joke”. Calling someone a chicken generally means that they are a wimp or coward.

There is also the famous “why did the chicken cross the road?” joke, that has a major place in

our everyday rhetoric. Also, the word “cock” has gained a phallic definition. It also has a place in
our media. For example, Charlie Chaplin turned into a chicken in The Gold Rush as well as

Richard Briers pulling a revolver on a hen in The Good Life. (Sweet)

Overall, chicken is a part of the human’s diet that is enormously important. There is a

long history behind chicken, from all the way back when chickens were used only ceremonially,

to when they first began being bred, to when interest was lost in them, and then to when the

breeding of chickens and the egg-laying industry began to take shape, and finally to today, where

there are farms that have millions of chickens put out every year. In these massive farms there

are still problems with health, and it looks like the chicken industry is only set to increase, as it

gets more massive by the day, due to increased consumption. In this paper, I think I could have

focused more on the origins of the chicken in Asia, as I mainly focused on Europe and North

America. For further study, I would like to learn more about the different ways Chicken is

prepared all around the world. I think that would be very exciting, and something that would be

interesting to explore, and even taste.

Works Cited

A Cultural History of the Chicken.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 17

Sept. 2011, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/a-cultural-history-of-the-chicken-

5355524.html.

Adler, Andrew Lawler, Jerry. “How the Chicken Conquered the World.” Smithsonian.com,

Smithsonian Institution, 1 June 2012, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-chicken-

conquered-the-world-87583657/.

Derry, Margaret E. Art and Science in Breeding: Creating Better Chickens. University of

Toronto Press, 2012.

Leeson, Steven. The Ontario Poultry Industry: An Illustrated History. Ontario Poultry Council,

1986.

Meat Atlas: Facts and Figures about the Animals We Eat. Heinrich Boll Stiftung Foundation,

2014.

Time-Life Books. poultry. Time-Life Books, 1979.