Planet Chicken: The Shameful Story of the Bird on Your Plate by Hattie Ellis
I’d like to start by saying that it’s a little ironic that the very first book I’m reviewing for the tastybooks site is one of the least appetizing reads of the year.
Planet Chicken is a well-informed look at the world of chicken farming. It takes us on a journey through the history of chickens from farm birds to their current state as ‘lumps of matter’, via cockfighting and the salmonella crisis of the 1980s. But this is not predominantly a history book, it is an issue book. The issue being that we humans as a race are eating so much chicken that the only way to sustain our habit at pricing point we have come to expect is by employing methods of intensive rearing so horrific, that if someone were to be caught on camera doing it to just one backyard bird, it could plausibly form the basis of an RSPCA fundraising video.
Having said this book is centred around an issue, the main prong of which concerns animal welfare, it does so while managing not to be a tub-thumping, vegan-shoe wearing, carnivore-hating pamphlet. By looking at the facts, the author takes us through the possible health implications for humans and the appealing alternative of eating less - but much much nicer - chicken.
If you are reading it, the chances are, you are making moves towards the organic and the free range already. Issues such as food miles, the state of our school dinners and genetic modification have more than likely already appeared on your radar over the last few years - which is why you will hopefully enjoy, or at least feel engaged by this book. It helps to fill in the gaps and along the way hands out a generous basket of chicken and egg related facts; from the history of cockfighting and its centrality to London street-naming, to what really constitutes a free range hen and who controls an industry which sees these birds ending up on our tables, in our sandwiches and deep fried, half masticated on our pavements.
Planet Chicken is a well-organised book, neatly separated into two halves. The first half, “What are we doing?” covers the grim reality. This is not for the feint hearted but as I have alluded to already, if you are reading it, you would probably rather not than remain in the dark anyway. The second is entitled “What can we do?” and gives a somewhat lighter and more hopeful side to proceedings. This technique of two halves serves two purposes. Firstly, it helps to create a balanced view about the life of chickens; by discussing on the one hand what we are doing to chickens through modern farming process and the positive action we can take on the other.
Secondly and - from a reader’s point of view, more importantly - it acts as a relief from the stream of unrelenting and gruesome imagery; broiler birds who cannot walk, the hot water bath which they are passed through to loosen their feathers before the rubber fingers pluck them and the battery hens who have had their beaks removed so as not to damage each other or fight their keepers. I must admit I had trouble picking it up at times during the first half, worried that I was going to be subject to another barrage of horror before bed time. Thankfully, once I passed over the brow of the hill, the view was more hopeful. Descriptions of chickens in the natural surroundings abound as do those of the quarter of a million Brits that keep them as hobby-fowl. Even the way farmers dye free range egg yolks darker by feeding them marigold petals, and descriptions of old-school cockfighting seemed lighter and somehow more innocent than our modern, mechanised acts of cruelty.
I changed my chicken buying habits within hours of reading the first few chapters of this book. As the author points out several times, with reference to various other food revolutions in recent history, if we can all change a little, then we can contribute to real progress.
Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall has written the foreword to this book and there clearly could not be a finer champion or higher endorsement. The baton which he has been running with, with notable success over the past few has been taken up and run with on fresh legs.
Creamy words
Food writing and broadcasting is big business. In the current age of the celebrity obsession in particular it seems we cannot turn on the TV, open a colour supplement or walk past the first table in a book shop without being tempted by some attractive and mouth-watering new opportunity to cook ourselves some more lipsmacking grub.
Inevitably with an industry so big, there will be mediocraty; huge, creamy, swathes of the stuff. Some of it excels in entertaining us while some nourishes our social conscience. Most of it however ends up looking good on our shelves while we make that first risotto we learned a few years ago.
On tastybooks we think that good food writing should cut through all that glossy, coffee-table show-boating like a hot, wet, properly sharpened knife through a slice of home-baked vanilla cheesecake.
Inspired by the writings of Elizabeth David, Nigel Slater and others like them, tastybooks is about good food writing. This in turn is invariably about good food. But over and above that, it is about writing that has been done with the passion to inspire you.
If a recipe book or columnist makes your mouth water, compells you to pick up a spatula, baste an unusual joint of meat or run outside early in the morning looking for the nearest dehydrated mushroom stockist - we want to know who did this to you and how. Share it with us, please.
We will be reviewing new food writing from cook-books and travelogs to good-husbandry guides and food history. We will be reviewing old cook-books we have just discovered which are new to us. We will be doing this in the hope that we can help guide each other through the dark, dense delicious jungle of modern food publishing.
So if you want to share your joy at a sumptuous description of a provencale kitchen or tell us what happened when you baked your first cake on the nurturing words of one of your food heroes, your contributions are welcome here.
In the mean time please be patient as this site is still under construction.
Scrumptious scribblings, tasty text and delicious diatribe will appear as soon as possible.