I'm not going to try to talk you out of eating turkey on Thanksgiving. I'm moving slowly toward less and less meat (for various reasons) but, heck, even I'll have turkey on Thursday. But I do think we need to make our choices with full knowledge.
This video is not acts of unusual or staged behavior. This is just the routine life of new mass grown turkeys.
Mass slaughter is no picnic either. The majority of turkeys are killed in large, semi-automated slaughterhouses. Turkeys are removed from their crates and hung upside down by their legs from shackles on a moving line. The shackles carry them to an electrically charged stunning water bath through which the bird’s head is dragged in order to render the bird unconscious, their necks are cut and the birds are then placed into a scalding tank, which is designed to loosen their feathers before plucking (hopefully they're dead by then).
In comparison, it's "compassionate" to stuff a live turkey upside down into a steel cone, slit its throat and then hold it down against its last desperate attempt to live.
So go ahead, enjoy our turkey, but we'll do it with our eyes open.
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7 comments:
Geez, David, what a heartwearming Thanksgiving post!
I'm thankful that someone else does that.
To be honest, I'm not a turkey fan, as far meat is considered. As a bird they're fine--a little odd and to scary, but I digress.
What I want to focus my comment on though is the inhumane treatment of vegetables. They start by being thrown into the ground and covered up with dirt. They are then sprayed with noxious chemicals. The strong will survive. Upon reaching full growth they are then unceremoniously cut from their roots or plucked from the ground. They are then further ground up or packaged and potentially treated with more chemicals. They have survived all this. They are then steamed, blanched, or eaten raw. All still while being alive.
I am saddened that no one cares about the plight of the vegetable.
Fortunately, I like ham, and it's typically served at the Thanksgiving feast in which I participate. I'm confident that pigs are treated with the utmost respect and delicacy (no pun intended) in their last hours.
I feel I have a unique perspective on this topic. I have spent the majority of my life dealing w/ animals at some point in the food chain or in animal science. I think that as a human it is in our nature to eat animal protein. It was our ability to extract the marrow from discarded carcasses that gave our bodies the ability to develop our brains. My teeth cut meat and my stomach digests it for a reason. What is objectionable is the corporatization of the food you eat. There are several disconnects in that system. The more efficiently we raise, kill and process an animal the less concern there is for that animal. The fact that most people couldn’t look at piece of meat and tell you what part of the animal it came from, let alone what animal it came from (turkey legs don’t count), means that the profit driven companies can drive efficiency as far as that unknowledgeable public will let them. In doing so, they sacrifice animal well-being, worker safety and public food safety.
As you can imagine, I have a lot to say about this. But I will agree on principle that the resources required to produce that meat for the american table needs to be addressed. The welfare of the animal is also something that needs to be addressed, but I don’t want to write a book. I am only writing a response to a blog.
As a parting shot, if you are not prepared to go Vegan and start wearing hemp shoes and cotton belts your arguments ring hollow.
That last line wasn't meant to sound as snarky as it reads. I don't have a problem w/ vegetarians.
An informative comment. Unfortunately, in your parting shot you did 2 things:
First, you read some argument between the lines of my post that is not there. In my post, I don't advocate that animals not be eaten. I urge our willingly blind consumer culture to open our eyes. We don't like to know why turkey is only $1.78 a pound this week. We don't like to know why a t-shirt only costs $8.99 or coffee 10 bucks a pound. The truth always matters.
Second, you make an "all or nothing" point that can prevent progress. If at any point I am not doing EVERYTHING I can to live nonviolently, that doesn't render moot or hollow my nonviolent choices. This is a very good topic and we'll unpack it later.
That shot of Palin being interviewed in front of turkeys being slaughtered was bizarre, but actually funny that you posted it in a wierd sort of way. Talk about a strange bird.:)
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