the intrinsic chickenness of a chicken

Last week's outbreak of avian flu in the U.K. revived concerns that bird flu could eventually become a human epidemic. It also brought up a still-unresolved debate on whether the intensive farming methods used in both the U.S. and the U.K. are the best way to prevent and contain diseases in food animals. In other words, are large-scale farms really the most healthy way to produce food animals?--or would small-scale, free-range farms be better?

I was converted in my thinking on this topic a long time ago, around the same time that I read Michael Pollan's brilliant book The Omnivore's Dilemma. Pollan not only introduced me to the issue of free-range vs. industrial food; he also introduced me to the personalities of the issue, small-scale sustainable farmers such as Joel Salatin. After reading the book, I sought out the opportunity to visit Salatin's Polyface Farms and see for myself what he's accomplishing there, but the ideas and philosophy behind the farm were already integrated into my worldview. It was Pollan, through his descriptions of Polyface Farms, that led me to fall in love with the beauty of small, local, diversified agriculture:

Polyface Farm is built on the efficiencies that come from mimicking relationships found in nature, and layering one farm enterprise over another on the same base of land. In effect, Joel is farming in time as well as in space--in four dimensions rather than three. He calls his intricate layering "stacking" and points out that "it is exactly the model God used in building nature." The idea is not to slavishly imitate nature, but to model a natural ecosystem in all its diversity and interdependence, one where all the species "fully express their physiological distinctiveness." He takes advantage of each species' natural proclivities in a way that not only benefits that animal but other species as well. So instead of treating a chicken as a simple egg or protein machine, Polyface honors--and exploits--"the innate distinctive desires of a chicken," which include pecking in the grass and cleaning up after herbivores. The chickens get to do, and eat, what they evolved to do and eat, and in the process the farmer and his cattle both profit. What is the opposite of zero-sum? I'm not sure, but this is it (Pollan 215).

The truth is that I didn't really need Pollan to convince me of the health benefits of small-scale, free-range farming. I had suspected for a long time that there was something inherently wrong with the western industrial system of food production; Pollan just gave me a more scientific basis for the argument. And Salatin gave me even more: he gave me a spiritual foundation for what was previously just a vague feeling. For Salatin, small-scale farming is about more than health or efficiency; it's about following the model God laid down for us. More than that, it's about enabling each plant and animal on the farm to follow its intrinsic nature. In a way, you could say it's about helping each animal and plant to be everything it was meant to be: helping them to fulfil their purpose in life.

We modern westerners are obsessed with our own purpose. We make The Purpose-Driven Life a bestseller; we dedicate our lives to searching for "meaning" and "calling." We never stop to consider that through most of history, just surviving has been sufficient meaning for the majority of humanity. For most of human history, the purpose of a human has been simply to be human--to live, to eat, to have a family, to die. "A man can do nothing better," says the writer of Ecclesiastes, "than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work" (2:24). Is it so terribly absurd to think that a chicken or a cow might want to do the same?

It's probably over-anthromorphizing to think that a chicken can care about its purpose in life. But a chicken certainly has instincts and tendencies--what Salatin calls the "innate distinctive desires of a chicken." And I think there is something significant in the fact that we humans are the only creatures on earth that have so much power to either imitate or destroy God's natural designs. We are the only ones who can so utterly prevent a chicken from fully living out its instincts during its life. And maybe there's more in that than we think. Maybe that's part of what it means to be stewards, and there's a real reason, beyond self-absorbtion, for our fascination with purpose and calling. Maybe our ability to either help or hinder other species in living according to their purposes is part of the calling of humankind, and our ability to help a chicken be a chicken is one of the innate distinctive desires of a human being.