感恩節後回顧一下雞的歷史

THIS season millions of Americans will celebrate with turkey on the table. The turkey is, after all, the native North American animal that Benjamin Franklin considered “a much more respectable bird” than the scavenging bald eagle. But while the eagle landed on the country’s Great Seal and the turkey gets pride of place at our holiday dinners, neither bird can claim to have changed American culture more than their lowly avian cousin, the chicken.

這個季節，千百萬美國人在慶祝節日時，餐桌上都擺着火雞。畢竟，火雞是北美本土的物種，本傑明·富蘭克林(Benjamin Franklin)認爲它與翻找腐肉的白頭鷹相比，是一種“遠更值得尊重的鳥”。儘管白頭鷹登上了美國的國徽，火雞也驕傲地成爲節日餐桌上舉國同享的美味，但這兩種鳥對美國文化產生的影響，都比不上它們身份低微的表親——家雞。

English settlers arriving at Jamestown in 1607 brought a flock of chickens that helped the struggling colony survive its first harsh winters, and the bird was on the Mayflower 13 years later. But the popularity of the Old World fowl soon faded, as turkey, goose, pigeon, duck and other tastier native game were plentiful.

英國殖民者在1607年抵達詹姆斯敦的時候，帶來了一羣雞。雞幫助處境艱難的殖民地度過了最初幾個凜冽的寒冬。13年後的“五月花號”(Mayflower)上也帶了雞。不過，由於火雞、鵝、鴿、鴨及其他更美味的本地禽類琳琅滿目，雞這種舊大陸家禽變得不再那麼受人關注。

This proved a boon for enslaved Africans. Fearful that human chattel could buy their freedom from profits made by selling animals, the Virginia General Assembly in 1692 made it illegal for slaves to own horses, cattle or pigs. Poultry, though, wasn’t considered worth mentioning.

不過，這對從非洲販運來的奴隸倒是個好消息。由於擔心作爲私產的黑奴通過販賣動物來賺錢贖身，弗吉尼亞議會(Virginia General Assembly)在1692年頒佈法令，禁止黑奴擁有馬、牛、豬。不過，他們認爲家禽不值一提。

This loophole offered an opportunity. Most slaves came from West Africa, where raising chickens had a long history. Soon, African-Americans in the colonial South — both enslaved and free — emerged as the “general chicken merchants,” wrote one white planter. At George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, slaves were forbidden to raise ducks or geese, making the chicken “the only pleasure allowed to Negroes,” one visitor noted. The pleasure was not just culinary, but financial: In 1775, Thomas Jefferson paid two silver Spanish bits to slaves in exchange for three chickens. Such sales were common.

這個法律漏洞提供了一個機會。許多黑奴來自非洲西部，在那裏養雞有很長的歷史。很快，如一位白人種植園主所寫到的，南方殖民地的非裔美國人，包括奴隸和自由人，就成了“常見的雞販”。在喬治·華盛頓(George Washington)的家弗農山莊(Mount Vernon)，奴隸們被禁止養鴨子或鵝，一位來訪者寫道，於是雞就成了“黑人獲准擁有的唯一樂趣”。這種樂趣不僅涉及口腹，也涉及金錢。在1775年，托馬斯·傑斐遜(Thomas Jefferson)花了兩個西班牙雷亞爾，從黑奴手中買來了三隻雞。這樣的交易頗爲普遍。

Black cooks were in a position to influence their masters’ choice of dishes, and they naturally favored the meat raised by their friends and relatives. One of the West African specialties that caught on among white people was chicken pieces fried in oil — the meal that now, around the world, is considered quintessentially American.

黑人廚師可以影響主人對菜餚的選擇，而他們自然更喜歡朋友和親戚養殖的禽肉。油炸雞塊這道西非特色菜，就這樣在白人當中受到了歡迎。而現在，這種吃法在全世界都被認爲是典型的美國菜。

Slaves laid the foundation for the American appetite for chicken, but it was the forced opening of China by the West in the 1840s that made the modern bird possible. American ships brought specimens of Asian chickens never seen in America. Breeders crossed the large and colorful exotics with their smaller but hardier Western counterparts to produce a bird that could lay more eggs and provide more meat. The results were famous varieties, like the Plymouth Rock and Rhode Island Red, that appeared just as the nation began to industrialize.

黑奴爲美國人熱愛雞肉的胃口奠定了基礎，不過現代家雞的問世，卻要歸結於1840年以後中國迫於西方壓力而開關通商。由此，美國艦船帶回了其本土前所未見的亞洲雞。人們又將這些體格較大、色彩斑斕的雞，與體格較小但適應力更強的西方雞雜交，進而培育出了下蛋更多、產肉也更多的雞種。其結果就是，在美國即將開始工業化時，普利茅斯石雞(Plymouth Rock)和羅德島紅雞(Rhode Island Red)這樣的著名品種問世了。

Still, chicken rearing in the United States remained a small-scale family business; American meat-eating tended toward pork and beef, with chickens used mostly for eggs.

不過，養雞當時在美國仍然是一種小規模的家庭生意。美國人食肉的習慣也傾向於豬肉和牛肉，養雞主要是爲了下蛋。

That began to change with the arrival of millions of Eastern European Jews, who relied on chicken as a meat source. By 1900, New York City boasted 1,500 kosher butcher shops, stocked by train cars filled with live chickens that arrived mainly from farms in the Midwest, where rural women, who ran much of the poultry business at the time, took advantage of the growing demand.

隨着數百萬東歐猶太人的到來，這一點也開始發生轉變，他們依賴雞這種肉質來源。到1900年，紐約市有多達1500家猶太潔食(kosher)屠宰鋪，出售的肉食主要來自中西部的農場出產，通過火車運來的活雞。當時養殖禽類的生意主要由農村婦女經營，她們抓住時機迴應了擴大的需求。

Their market soon extended beyond immigrant Jews. Millions of people were leaving their Midwestern and Southern farms for factory jobs in the expanding cities in the North. Finding a reliable and cheap source of protein was critical. Pork and beef were expensive for urban shoppers, and there were not enough eggs produced in the United States to satisfy their appetites. The chicken business started to take off.

市場很快就拓展到了猶太移民社區之外。千百萬人離開美國中西部和南部的農場，到不斷擴張的北部城市尋找工廠的工作。要找到可靠廉價的蛋白質來源至關重要。豬肉和牛肉對城市裏的消費者來說太昂貴了，而且美國出產的蛋也不足以滿足美國人的胃口。於是養雞產業開始飛速發展。

World War I gave chickens another boost, when beef and pork stocks were diverted to the troops. Then, in 1923, an entrepreneurial Delaware woman named Celia Steele began sending the first broilers to New York, birthing a multibillion-dollar industry. For the first time, chickens began to be sold solely for their meat on a mass scale.

第一次世界大戰也給養雞業帶來了另一個助推，那時牛肉和豬肉儲備轉到了軍隊手中。1923年，特拉華州一位名叫西莉亞·斯蒂爾(Celia Steele)的女企業家，開始向紐約供應首批批量飼養的肉雞，進而催生了一個價值數十億美元的產業。這是雞第一次因爲它的肉，而被大規模出售。

The rise of the chicken continued through the Great Depression, when chicken farming helped many farmers get by. Henry A. Wallace, a sometime vegetarian pacifist from Iowa who also served as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s agriculture secretary and vice president, argued that the chicken was the savior of poverty-stricken rural Americans. The company he helped found in the 1920s is now the world’s largest single producer of egg-laying hens. Finally, in the 1950s, engineers and scientists created a bird that could grow quickly with minimal feed — and the chicken we know today emerged.

雞的興起一直貫穿了大蕭條(Great Depression)時期，那時的養雞產業幫助許多農戶度過困境。富蘭克林·D·羅斯福(Franklin D. Roosevelt)麾下的農業部長和副總統亨利·A·華萊士(Henry A. Wallace)一度食素，也是一名和平主義者。來自艾奧瓦州的華萊士認爲，對於陷入貧困的美國農村，雞是一個救星。他在1920年代幫助建立的公司，現在是世界上最大的蛋雞飼養企業。最後在1950年代，工程師和科學家培育出了一種耗費飼料很少但增重很快的雞。今天我們所知的雞就是這時產生的。

Today chicken is cheap, and it has become America’s favorite meat. In the land of the hamburger, we eat more of it than beef. And while we enjoy turkey at Thanksgiving, over the course of the year we will consume five times as much chicken.

今天的雞肉價格低廉，也已經成爲美國人最喜歡的肉類。在這個漢堡包的國度，我們吃的雞肉卻比牛肉還多。儘管我們會在感恩節時享用火雞，但全年消費雞肉的總量卻是火雞的五倍。

The bonanza of cheap meat and eggs has been a boon in many ways, but it has come at a largely hidden cost. Billions of chickens, both layers and broilers, live in vast warehouses locked behind fences and unprotected by federal regulations, which don’t consider poultry raised for food as animals. Then there are the low-paid workers who labor in the cold and dark of processing plants with high rates of injury, and the environmental degradation that sullies our waterways. And today’s industrial bird is a relatively tasteless food that we must relentlessly flavor with sauces, marinades and rubs.

廉價肉蛋的豐富供應，在很多方面都是好事，但其中也存在常常不爲人知的成本。數十億隻肉雞和蛋雞都飼養在巨大的倉庫裏，鎖在籠子裏，不受聯邦法規的保障，因爲聯邦法規不把食用禽類視爲動物。此外，還有薪水微薄的工人，他們在冰冷陰暗的加工廠裏勞作，工傷率極高，相應的環境影響也污染了我們的河道。今天工業飼養的肉禽比較寡淡無味，所以我們必須要極力醃漬、蘸醬汁、撒調料。

So as we celebrate and give thanks this season, take a moment to consider the lowly chicken, and how its story and that of our country are so deeply entwined. The bird that gets little respect is the creature that has given us more than we know.

所以，我們在這個時節表達感謝時，請花些時間想一想身份低微的雞，也考慮一下雞肉的歷史與這個國家的歷史聯繫多麼緊密。這種極少受人尊重的家禽，爲我們做出了很多貢獻，可我們卻知之甚少。