You might think the headline promises science and agriculture coming together to help reform the way we raise and process chickens. It doesn’t. Instead, Boyce Upholt tells of the 20th-century quest that changed our food system irrevocably—and how the consequences of that “progress” continue to ripple across the world. An accomplished blend of history and present-day reporting.
Is it possible to build a system of animal agriculture that deepens rather than distances our relationship with animals? One potential ideal might be a future where anyone who chooses to eat meat keeps a handful of chickens clucking through their backyards. When I raised this possibility with one epidemiologist, though, she cautioned that an expansion of such “small-holder” poultry farms could be its own pandemic risk: Now that influenza is endemic in wild birds, a more dispersed poultry production system means more potential sites for spillover.
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