Thoughts On Establishing A New Thanksgiving Tradition

By Jonathan Safran Foer, from his book Eating Animals:

 

"Perhaps the turkey is there because it is fundamental to the ritual -- it is how we celebrate Thanksgiving. Why? Because Pilgrims might have eaten it at their first Thanksgiving? It's more likely that they didn't. We know that they didn't have corn, apples, potatoes, or cranberries...

But let's just make believe that the Pilgrims invented Thanksgiving and were eating turkey. Putting aside the obvious fact that the Pilgrims did many things that we wouldn't want to do now (and that we want to do many things they didn't), the turkeys we eat have about as much in common with the turkeys the Pilgrims might have eaten as does the ever-punch-lined tofurkey. At the center of our Thanksgiving tables is an animal that never breathed fresh air or saw the sky until it was packed away for slaughter. At the end of our forks is an animal incapable of reproducing sexually. In our bellies is an animal with antibiotics in its belly. The very genetics of our birds are radically different. If the Pilgrims could have seen into the future, what would they have thought of the turkey on our table? Without exaggeration, it's unlikely that they would have recognized it as a turkey.

 

And what would happen if there were no turkey? Would the tradition be broken, or injured, if instead of a bird we simply had the sweet potato casserole, homemade rolls, green beans with almonds, cranberry concoctions, yams, mashed potatoes, pumpkin and pecan pies? It's not so hard to imagine it. See your loved ones around the table. Hear the sounds, smell the smells. There is no turkey. Is the holiday undermined? Is Thanksgiving no longer Thanksgiving?

Or would Thanksgiving be enhanced? Would the choice not to eat turkey be a more active way or celebrating how thankful we feel? Would the joy be lessened by the hunger to eat that particular animal? Imagine your family's Thanksgivings after you are gone, when the question is no longer "Why don't we eat this?" but the more obvious one: "Why did they ever?"."

A Turkey's Life On The (Factory) Farm

From www.peta.org:
"Every year in the United States , almost 300 million turkeys are killed for their flesh (about 45 million are killed annually for Thanksgiving). Virtually all spend their entire lives on factory farms and have no federal legal protection.
Turkeys raised on factory farms are hatched in large incubators and never see their mothers or feel the warmth of a nest. When they are only a few weeks old, they are moved into filthy, windowless sheds with thousands of other turkeys, where they will spend the rest of their lives.

To keep the birds from killing one another in such stressful, crowded conditions, parts of the turkeys' toes and beaks are cut off, as are the males' snoods. (The snood is the flap of skin under the chin.) All this is done without any pain relievers. Imagine having the skin under your chin chopped off with a pair of scissors.

Millions of turkeys don't even make it past the first few weeks of life in a factory farm before succumbing to "starve-out," a stress-induced condition that causes young birds to simply stop eating.
Turkeys are bred, drugged, and genetically manipulated to grow as large as possible as quickly as possible to increase profits. In 1970, the average live turkey raised for meat weighed 17 pounds. Today, he or she weighs 28 pounds. According to one industry publication, modern turkeys grow so quickly that if a 7-pound human baby grew at the same rate, the infant would weigh 1,500 pounds at just 18 weeks of age. Turkeys are now so obese that they cannot reproduce naturally; instead, all the turkeys who are born in the United States today on factory farms are conceived through artificial insemination.

Their unnaturally large size also causes many turkeys to die from organ failure or heart attacks before they are even 6 months old. According to an investigative report in the Wall Street Journal on the miserable conditions on turkey farms, "It's common in a rearing house to find a dead bird surrounded by four others whose hearts failed after they watched the first one 'fall back and go into convulsions, with its wings flapping wildly.'" Factory farm operators walk through the shed to kill the slow-growing turkeys (so that they don't eat any more food), such as those who fall ill because of the filthy conditions or become crippled under their own weight. "

Talking Turkeys

Many Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners revolve around eating turkey. Below is some information you may not know about these complex creatures. Now that we enjoy plant-based meals at my house, the holidays are an opportunity to express gratitude for all animals. In fact, we often place photos of some turkey friends from Animal Acres Farm Sanctuary (www.animalacres.org) on the Thanksgiving table. And because there are so many vegan holiday recipes to wow you and your family (more coming soon), it's easy to keep your holiday meals cruelty-free!

 

Turkeys

Photo: The Gentle Barn

 

By Karen Davis, PhD, author and founder of United Poulty Concerns This article appears in the November 2006 issue of Satya magazine. "My first encounter with turkeys took place at Farm Sanctuary where I worked as a volunteer one summer. There was a flock of about twenty white turkey hens and two bronze turkeys named Milton and Doris. One thing that impressed me then, and has stayed in my mind ever since, was how the turkeys’ voices, their yelps, floated about the place in an infinitely plaintive refrain. Another was how one or more of the female turkeys would suddenly sit down beside me in the midst of my work, with her wings stiff and her head held high, awaiting my attention. Photo by Lois Lifshutz Milton To understand the complex suffering of turkeys raised for food, one should begin by knowing that in nature, young turkeys stay close to their mothers for four or five months after hatching. Turkeys raised for food, however, never see their mothers.  Biologist William M. Healy has described the importance of bonding between young turkeys and their mothers for normal social development. He notes that much of what biologists know about wild turkey intelligence is based on work with domestic turkeys. He defends turkeys from the charge of stupidity by observing that genetic manipulation of turkeys for “such gross breast development that few adult males can even walk, let alone breed” creates demeaning stereotypes. Poultry specialist Dr. Ian Duncan of the University of Guelph, Ontario, states unequivocally that “turkeys possess marked intelligence [as] revealed by such behavioral indices as their complex social relationships, and their many different methods of communicating with each other, both visual and vocal.” Likewise, Oregon State University poultry science professor, Dr. Tom Savage, says of the turkey disrespect displayed in the popular media: “They have no idea what they are talking about.” I know from experience that turkeys who have lived their entire lives in industry settings can roam the woods and find their way back to the yard as soon as they get to our sanctuary. Despite the terrible things that have been done to their bodies – the gruesome genetics and mutilation of their toes and beaks at the hatchery – factory farm turkeys are alert to their surroundings and one another. While researching my book More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality, I learned other things about turkeys. For instance, they “transplant” sound from one bird to another within the flock at a moment’s danger. They also dance. In Illumination in the Flatwoods: A Season with the Wild Turkey, naturalist Joe Hutto describes how one morning in August, his three-month-old turkeys, upon seeing him, dropped from their roosting limbs where they had sat “softly chattering” in the dawn, “stretched their wings and did their strange little dance, a joyful, happy dance, expressing an exuberance.” And a witness who chanced upon an evening dance of adult birds wrote: I heard a flock of wild turkeys calling. They were not calling strayed members of the flock. They were just having a twilight frolic before going to roost. They kept dashing at one another in mock anger, stridently calling all the while, almost playing leapfrog in their antics. Their notes were bold and clear. For about five minutes they played on the brown pine-straw floor of the forest, then as if at a signal, they assumed a sudden stealth and stole off in the glimmering shadows.   Photo by Lois Lifshutz Doris An emotional behavior described in turkeys is “the great wake” they will hold over a fallen companion. In The Wild Turkey: Its History and Domestication, A.W. Schorger cites an episode in which the wing beats of a turkey hen who had been shot “brought a flock that stopped beside the dying bird.” Similar behavior has been observed in turkeys on factory farms when a bird goes into a convulsive heart attack, “It is not uncommon to go into a bird house and see the afflicted bird lying dead, surrounded by three or four other birds that died because of the hysteria caused,” wrote a poultry researcher. Such “hysteria” reveals a sensibility in turkeys that should awaken us to how badly we treat them and make us stop. Turkeys have a mysterious empathy with one another under duress, and they can be fierce fighters as well. A turkey mother will fight vigorously to protect her young, as described by an observer of the following drama in rural Virginia: I saw a turkey coming into the back field. She had about 10 babies the size of large quail walking with her. Without warning, the hen took off vertically as if she had stepped on a mine. About 20 feet off the ground, she intercepted and attacked a hawk that was coming in for a baby. The hen hit the hawk with her feet first and with her back almost parallel to the ground. The hawk flew toward the back of the field with the hen in pursuit; it turned back towards the babies, and the hen hit it again. They both fell about 10 feet and were fighting with their feet, until the hawk headed for the tree line and kept going. The hen returned to her babies. When they went back into the pines, the babies were very close to their mother’s feet. Let us remember that turkeys need our help and they deserve our respect. Between April and July 2006, PETA investigators documented horrific cruelty to turkeys at the Butterball slaughter plant in Ozark, Arkansas. Butterball turkeys are hung upside down, shocked in painful electrified water that paralyzes and does Not stun them. Their necks are then partially slit and, dead or alive, they are thrown into scalding water. Adding to their misery, workers were taped stomping on live turkeys, slamming them against walls, exploding their skulls and popping out their spines with sadistic glee. This is the culture of slaughter. Please don’t support it. Order our vegan cookbook Instead of Chicken, Instead of Turkey: A Poultryless “Poultry” Potpourri for delicious, easy recipes, and More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality for the cultural, literary, and natural history of turkeys.* * Note: You'll also find plenty of cruelty-free holiday recipes this month and next in The Daily Vegan.