Cry fowl! Why the apparently humble chicken actually has plenty to crow about

Andrew Lawler’s book Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? documents the virtues of our most important source of protein

Pervasive, mundane and bland, chicken is the magnolia paint of the meat aisle: a pedestrian, if practical, choice. But according to Andrew Lawler, its ubiquity belies a significance that we ignore at our peril. “The chicken has assumed this huge [influence] as the most important source of protein for humanity without people really giving a lot of thought to the chicken itself,” he says.

Setting the record straight, Lawler’s latest tome recasts the chicken as a “feathered Swiss Army knife” – a bird that has fuelled cultural, economic and scientific growth for several thousand years since the shy and skittish red junglefowl of Asia became domesticated, picked up a dash of grey junglefowl genes and ultimately – by means of an unlikely sounding postwar breeding contest called the “Chicken of Tomorrow” – became the broiler of today.

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