Is the chicken the most potent symbol of our time?
Modern broilers are a wholly technologydependent species.
The humble chicken ( Gallus gallus
domesticus) is the actual and symbolic product of humanity’s influence on the planet, researchers claim.
The sheer numbers of the bird and the changes to its height and mass brought on by specialised breeding programs initiated in the 1950s “vividly symbolise the transformation of the biosphere to fit evolving human consumption patterns”, according to a team led by Carys Bennett from the UK’S University of Leicester. Writing in the journal Royal Society
Open Science, they suggest the modern domesticated chicken serves as solid evidence for the classification of the current period in world history as the “Anthropocene”.
The term denotes a time in which the Earth is totally dominated and largely reconfigured by humans. It is controversial, however, with some scientists feeling it has more to do with pop-culture than empirical evidence.
Even among those who feel it has merit, debate rages over when the Anthropocene began. Estimates range from 900CE to 1950.
Bennett and her colleagues favour the more recent end of the spectrum, and cite as a key marker the post-war advent of the Chicken of Tomorrow competition launched by the US Atlantic and Pacific supermarket chain to encourage farmers to breed a fatter bird.
Since then, the researchers write, “chickens have undergone extraordinary changes. From the mid-twentieth century to the present, broiler growth rates have soared, with up to a fivefold increase in individual biomass.”
The modern chicken is, in fact, a wholly anthropogenic species, with its survival utterly dependent on the technology of intensive meat production. In the US, 97% of broiler hens are reared in factory farms, and worldwide the figure drops only to 72%.