The broiler chicken is the quintessence of the modern meat complex. In 1925 the average chicken brought to slaughter was 112 days old, ate 4.7 pounds of feed for every pound of liveweight chicken, and weighed 2.5 pounds when its neck was wrung. Today, an industrially raised chicken lives to 47 days, takes only 1.69 pounds of feed for every pound of chicken, and reaches 6.57 pounds. The bird is an unsteady scaffold for its ponderous breast. When they are finished growing, chickens are shoveled (or scooped by a harvester that has been compared to a Zamboni) into boxes and shipped to a processing facility, where Benjamin Ward Richardson’s vision of electronarcosis is carried to its mechanized extreme: The birds are strapped into conveyor belts, flipped upside down, plunged headfirst into water, then washed in an electrical bath. The stunned animals are then decapitated.…