Maryn McKenna. Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats. Washington, DC: National Geographic Partners, 2017. $18.36. pp. 400. Hardcover. ISBN 1426217668.

• Published date: 01 June 2018
• Date: 01 June 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.266
• Author: Saskia Popescu

Book Review

Maryn McKenna. Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern

Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats. Washington, DC: National

Geographic Partners, 2017. $18.36. pp. 400. Hardcover. ISBN 1426217668.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an infectious disease threat that struggles

to catch headlines. Resistant infections have managed to establish a permanent

residence in society without making much of a rumble, unlike cases of Ebola in

Dallas, Texas, or West Nile virus in New York City. The Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that in the United States alone, there are

over 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths related to antibiotic resistance (CDC,

2018). A report commissioned by the British Prime Minister found that if left

unchecked, global deaths would climb from the current 700,000 a year, to 10

million by 2050. The cost of antimicrobial resistance in lost global production

between then and now would be $100 trillion (O’Neill, 2016). The tricky thing

about antimicrobial resistance though, is not just the slow burn that fails to catch

headlines, but ultimately the complexity of the problem. Antimicrobial resistance

goes beyond prescribing of antibiotics in a medical setting and branches into

agriculture, stressing the intrinsic relationship among humans, animal, and

environment.

Maryn McKenna took on this challenge through one facet that is often poorly

understood; agriculture. More specif‌ically, poultry. Big Chicken says a lot just in

the title, but the journey that McKenna takes readers on is a winding road of

farms, biosafety, policy, and One Health. McKenna cleverly focuses f‌irst on a man

stricken with a resistant gastrointestinal illness. The devastation an outbreak of

resistant Salmonella can do to a person lays the groundwork for how far-reaching

the threat of antimicrobial resistance is, and ultimately, that it comes from places

the general population considers unexpected.

Following this introduction to illness, Big Chicken explains the history of

poultry consumption in the United States, but also how the utilization of

antibiotics changed the industry forever. McKenna takes care to not use overly

technical jargon, but ensures that the reader knows the history of growth-

promoting hormones in poultry and the rise of the Chicken of Tomorrow. It’s not

World Medical & Health Policy, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2018

208

doi: 10.1002/wmh3.266

#2018 Policy Studies Organization