In Iraq, Wellesley native works with chicken farmers, not guns

In Wellesley, where Jessica McCoy grew up, finding locally grown chicken for dinner wouldn't be a major challenge. But in Iraq, where McCoy now lives, fresh, local chicken has gotten harder to come by.

Chicken is important to the Iraqi diet, McCoy said in an e-mail interview, because it presents the ideal "meat packet" to provide protein for a single family at the village level.

But after the 2003 collapse of the Iraqi government, the industry was left in disarray. The bird flu scare and an influx of cheap, frozen chicken from Brazil and the U.S. helped make a bad situation worse. Many Iraqi poultry growers sold their farms after 2003 and, as a result, those managing the farms now are doing it for the first time.