Imagine this: You’ve just finished a long day of hiking through the karst hills of Guilin, China and are famished. You come upon a small, family-run food stall, complete with four plastic folding tables, two woks on a gas burner stove, and about a half dozen healthy adult chickens running around the premises. A young woman hands you a paper menu printed in Chinese. You order 宫保鸡丁 (Kung Pao Chicken) not because you have a craving for it, but because it’s one of the only menu offerings you can actually read. The young woman smiles and mentally takes your order. Then, she grabs the chicken pecking around your feet, takes it outside by the road, chops off its head, dips the still-writhing body in a bucket of water, plucks its feathers in four minutes flat, dices up the flesh, and cooks it. The killing is swift, and dinner is served.

Now imagine the same initial scenario, except this time, you ignore the blisters on your feet, walking a bit further until you come upon a nice sixty-seat, air-conditioned restaurant. A uniformed waitress hands you a menu printed in English and Chinese and for some strange reason (Out of habit? Because it’s safe? Because you recognize it? Because it’s easy?) you order Kung Pao Chicken.  She scrawls your order on a piece of paper and heads back to the kitchen. Your meal arrives fifteen minutes later, minus the slaughterfest of scenario A.

The first chicken, the “free-bird,” the chicken that pecked my bum at a roadside stand before becoming someone’s dinner, was the last chicken I’d seen in China.

The second chicken is more of a mystery.

For a while now, I have been doing a lot of thinking about how what we put in our bodies affects both our individual lives and society as a whole. In my search for answers about food, I recently picked Jonathan Safran Foer’s incredible book, “Eating Animals,” a memoir that explores the history, philosophy, and folklore of how we justify the way we eat. Safran Foer’s stated intention in writing the book was not to turn his audience into a bunch of die-hard vegans and animal-right activists- nor is mine- but rather an inquiry into what it means to “eat animals” in an age where family farms are nearing extinction. If you read any one book this year, I urge you to consider picking up this one because hey, what’s more important to your life than what you put in your mouth?

But, let’s get back to the second chicken, the “mystery chicken,” the chicken in the fancy restaurant. What if it was like the type of chicken that Safran Foer describes in his book, the US “factory farmed chicken”?” What if this fancy restaurant chicken lived in a cramped, filthy, feces-encrusted room with other dead/dying/diseased chickens for the entirety of its forty-two day life (in the name of “science”, this chicken only gets to live for forty-two days)? That this “fancy” chicken, although drug-stuffed, was likely infected with a nasty virus like E. Coli, and that this chicken had been dipped in a chlorine bath, plumped up with “fecal soup,” and then injected with a salty solution to make it taste good before it traveled thousands of miles to get to the restaurant that you’re sitting in, starving, with chopsticks (or fork and knife) in hand?

Which chicken would you rather have for dinner- chicken A or chicken B?

While “Eating Animals” focuses mainly on US agribusiness, I could not help but wonder how much the American model of “efficient farming” and next-generation chickens has impacted the way that China, the world’s biggest consumer of agricultural products, eats today. According to the Institute for Food and Development Policy, a California-based NGO, meat consumption in China has quadrupled since 1980, at approximately 119 pounds per person each year (USA averages about 185 pounds per capita), with more than 50,000 factory farms in operation. But, who cares, right? We all have to eat and China has 1.3 billion people to feed. Well, beyond the evidence that consuming factory-farmed animal products may not be so healthy for us after all, there are a few other reasons to be concerned, like the negative impact that factory farming has on the environment and the possible link between factory farming, food-borne illnesses and pandemics. In other words, take what we already know about the not-so-pretty side of factory farming in the US and extrapolate it. What will it mean when a nation as large as China consumes as much meat as the US does per capita? Why are we consuming so much meat in the first place? What does it mean when factory farms become the global norm? How is China’s chicken industry changing to keep up with rapid development and shifts in consumption? Additionally, what does it mean when US companies, like Goldman Sachs, invest in Chinese chicken farms?

I don’t have the answers, nor can I claim that Safran-Foer’s description of factory-farmed chickens is entirely accurate- after all, I’m not a chicken expert nor have I ever seen the inside of a chicken factory farm- but I think, at the least, it’s worth talking about.

Just a little food for thought.

Be sure to check out Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, “Eating Animals.” What do you think about this issue? Should we be concerned about the growth of factory farming in the US, China and the rest of the world? Any insight into today’s chickens (or pigs or cows) in China?

Commentary agribusiness, chicken, china, Eating Animals, factory farming, Jonathan Safran Foer

A few months after my now-husband proposed to me I had asked him, point-blank and in the most unromantic way, “how will it work when we get married? I want to return to Asia, but your career is in the US.” He simply smiled and, as typical with die-hard optimists (and maddening to people like me) said, “things have a way of working themselves out.” Due mainly to the economic crisis, our first year as a family had its challenges as I sought meaningful work while he contemplated the next logical move in his own professional future. And then, suddenly- finally- a rather surprising opportunity requiring little contemplation presented itself; my husband was offered a position in his field of search advertising technology with a focus on East Asian engines. Regarding the required relocation to Singapore, we didn’t even have to think about it.

So, it is now official… after two years of attempting to head back to the Eastern hemisphere on a long-term basis with the goal of forging Asia-focused careers, we have made the leap. We arrived in Singapore at 2am this morning with cat in tow and are now searching for a place to call “home” while acclimating ourselves to this new environment. The moving process itself has been cathartic. My hope is back. The smog that lingered over my own career path is lifting as hiring inquiries have begun once again to trickle in; related frustration and inertia that had enveloped my last few months in New York have all but disappeared. Donating ninety percent of our possessions has served to remind us that our “stuff” has no bearing on our worth. Forgotten Mandarin translations are recollected and applied again. I feel more confident that when I do eventually return to my own country, I’ll have something more to offer it. And, my husband- the optimist- is still smiling despite his jet lag.

While New York will always be my true home, my experiences as an expatriate have had a major impact in shaping my life. My time as a child in Trinidad brought a sense of wonder about cultural difference while quickly toughening me up. I became the token white girl; our home was robbed on a regular basis; my parents embarked on their version of “The War of the Roses.” In China as a young adult, I fell head over heels with a nation and its language while finding myself simultaneously overwhelmed by what I’d deemed personal failure. I discovered who I wanted to be in China and yet I left the country broken. It is impossible to predict the effects that Singapore will have on my life, but I come armed with the knowledge of two useful truths: 1) the concept of “a fresh start” is relative and, 2) the concept of “immersion” is also relative. That said, I feel a bit wiser, more grounded this time around and I can’t wait to see what unfolds in the months ahead. After all, third time’s a charm, right?

Commentary expatriate, Singapore