The tradition of Thanksgiving in North America started as a way to give thanks for the recent harvest. Things have changed in today’s world. As Bill Maher joked in his HBO special, “We don’t harvest s***.” Unfortunately, Thanksgiving has morphed into a day filled with bloated bellies and endless consumption, complete with all the trimmings.
The centerpiece of this consumption is the turkey, a bird with which Benjamin Franklin almost replaced the eagle as our national symbol. The turkey is so ingrained in the Thanksgiving tradition that some people and signs, including one outside the University Campus Store, refer to Thanksgiving as “Turkey Day.”
A recent undercover investigation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals at a Butterball plant in Ozark, Ark., documented the abhorrent conditions and shocking treatment that turkeys experience before appearing on dinner tables across the nation.
This investigation (available on butterballcruelty.com) revealed “Butterball workers…punching and stomping on live turkeys, (and) slamming them against walls.”
This brutality continued as one worker “stomped on a bird’s head until her skull exploded, another swung a turkey against a metal handrail so hard that her spine popped out, and another was seen inserting his finger into a turkey’s cloaca (vagina). Other workers bragged about their contempt they had for the turkeys and said, ‘If you jump on their stomachs right, they’ll pop…or their insides will come out of their (rectums).'”
These practices might be outside the normal procedures for the 50,000 turkeys that are slaughtered each day at the plant, but they reflect an utter lack of concern or respect that is found throughout the industry that murders 300,000 million turkeys each year, including 45 million for Thanksgiving alone.
Although turkeys have a normal life span of 10-12 years, factory-farmed turkeys spend their four- to five-month lives crammed inside a dark and overcrowded shed with thousands of other turkeys with a total of no more than 3.5 square feet given to each bird. Deprived the warmth of the sun, fresh air and an outlet for their natural instincts, such as dust bathing and nest building, turkeys spend these few months under the strain of constant feeding, almost to the point of structural destruction, so that the genetically bred birds reach their market weight in record time.
“Modern turkeys grow so quickly that if a 7-lb. human baby grew at the same rate, the infant would weigh 1,500 lbs. at just 18 weeks of age,” one industry official said, describing the unnatural growth of turkeys.
The turkeys are then transported to slaughterhouses, such as Butterball, where they are hung upside down by their feet, plunged into a stunning tank, and have their throats slit by the killing knife. Amazingly, some turkeys survive and are then boiled alive when they reach the scalding tank for feather removal.
This standard practice is just barely above the horrendous acts of cruelty unveiled at the Butterball plant, a practice that is supported because no federal laws protect turkeys or chickens from cruelty during slaughter. Instead, these social and intelligent animals are met with cruelty from the time they’re born until their deaths.
“I’ve always viewed turkeys as smart animals with personality and character and keen awareness of their surroundings,” said Tom Savage, Oregon State University poultry scientist . “The ‘dumb’ tag simply doesn’t fit.”
Writer Erik Marcus tells of how social turkeys are at Farm Sanctuaries.
“Turkeys remember your face, and they will sit closer to you with each day you revisit,” he said. “Come back day after day and, before long, a few birds will pick you out as their favorite, and they will come running up to you whenever you arrive. It’s definitely a matter of the birds choosing you rather than of you choosing the birds. Different birds choose different people.”
This Thanksgiving, make a choice of compassion for which turkeys will truly give thanks.
