Open Up Your Eyes

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.