How the use of antibiotics in poultry farming changed the way America eats

WILL HARRIS is one of the heroes of “Big Chicken”, a new book by Maryn McKenna that looks at the widespread use of antibiotics in poultry farming. After finishing his studies at the University of Georgia’s School of Agriculture in 1976, Mr Harris deployed all the instruments in his new toolkit to increase his farm’s profits: chemical fertilisers, pesticides, land tillage, antibiotics, hormones. They did wonders for cost-savings, he says, but made him increasingly uncomfortable. White Oak Pastures, his farm in western Georgia, has come full circle over 150 years. Transformed into an industrialised, commoditised and centralised agricultural operation, the farm has now reverted to ways that his grandfather might recognise. With its verdant 3,000 acres grazed by rabbits, sheep, pigs, goats, turkeys, ducks, geese, guinea hens, bees and chickens, it is now a textbook example of multi-species, pasture-based organic farming.

Few farmers in America dare to take such a radical step away from industrial farming methods. Ms McKenna shows how, for decades, the demand for “meat for the price of bread” has overridden other concerns. Around 15,400 tonnes a year, a whopping 80% of all antibiotics sold, go to farmers. Chicken farmers use even more than those who raise cattle or pigs. Only a small percentage of the drugs are used to cure illnesses. Their main function is to make the broilers fatten up more quickly or to act as a prophylactic against the cramped conditions in which they are raised. A chicken’s weight at slaughter today is twice what it was 70 years ago, and it achieves such heft in half the time.