Turkeys have a hard life before they reach the table
Every year at Thanksgiving in the U.S. hundreds of thousands of turkeys are slaughtered to celebrate the American colonists' survival in the new homeland.
Most of these animals were raised under intensive factory farm conditions.
A few days after birth thousands of baby turkeys are taken from their mothers and placed in long, window-less, environmentally controlled sheds to live out the remainder of their lives until slaughter.
The overwhelming majority of these factory farms are owned by huge corporations with no previous connection to agriculture who have entered the agricultural arena in order to get tax concessions or to diversify their profits.
In factory farm conditions, turkeys undergo acute physical, social and psychological stress and deprivation.
Unable to establish a normal social order in their grossly overcrowded quarters, which towards the end of their lives may amount to as little as one-half foot of floor space per bird, they become aggressive, even cannibalistic.
To counteract this, producers dim the lights during the birds' last weeks of life to near darkness.
Debeaking of turkeys, a demonstrably painful operation, is now the general rule.
As it is virtually impossible under these crowded conditions to dispose properly of the bird's dung, they are forced for many weeks to breathe the heavy ammonia filled air from their own droppings.
Transport and slaughter methods also subject the turkeys to considerable stress and suffering.
Animal suffering is not the only issue involved in the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, however.
There are also the problems of human health and world hunger.
More than 40 percent of the antibiotics produced in this country go into animal feeds.
In the case of poultry, almost 100 percent are given antibiotics to counteract the risk of disease, which arises largely from the stress attendant upon intensive confinement conditions.
Studies of food animal tissues have shown frequent illegally high levels of antibiotics.
This poses a serious threat of resultant tolerance to antibiotics in humans.
Even more importantly, it is common practice to make use of a host of chemical flavoring and coloring agents, antispoilants, etc, many of which are known carcinogens.
Giving thanks for the American colonists' survival by eating meat is also a moral contradiction, given the world hunger situation. While people in America consume turkey on Thanksgiving Day, thousands upon thousands of Third World peoples will be starving for want of adequate protein and nutrition. We can no longer afford to be so parochial in our diet and oblivious to the world and our own country's situation. The use of land for raising animals for slaughter, land which could be better used for growing high protein vegetable crops, and the feeding of high protein foods to "food animals," which could be used instead for feeding hungry people is not in the spirit of a true World Thanksgiving Day. Contact goveg.com