then what are we?

He returned his attention to his own carton. He wondered how far from an actual chicken a piece of chicken in a Chinese chicken dish could go and still get away with being called a piece of chicken. Of course, these nameless cubes (tasting of chalk and chamois leather) had nothing to do with young hens roaming around the farmyard; nothing to do with the main bits of even a battery bird, not leg nor breast; and nothing to do with the secondaries either -- the wings or the feet; nothing to do with livers, gizzards, or neck; nothing to do with bones or beaks or feathers. No -- at best, it was just about possible that these bits he was now eating had once been on the same factory floor as other meats that had known a few chicken pieces in their youth. And that was probably all the acquaintance with chicken they had ever garnered. So you had to credit them for their audacity -- they were quite prepared to go out into the world armed with nothing by way of a briefing save these old-timers' stories of what chicken used to be and just...just fake it, just belligerently pretend. Come on, then, you fuckers, if we're not chicken, then what are we? Huh? If we're not chicken, then don't eat us. Ha...see...you are doing it! You're eating us! Fucking A.

- From the book "Pravda" by Edward Docx