With Thanksgiving only a couple of days away, most of us are preparing to share a meal with our immediate families at home. It is a day to reflect and to give thanks for the wonderful things that fill our lives.
Sadly there is nothing to celebrate for the 46 million turkeys who are slaughtered each year for Thanksgiving alone. After a short misery-filled life, they are killed in the most horrific ways, just to end up on the dinner plate. Their lives are taken so humans can celebrate their own.
Turkeys are smart, playful, sensitive and curious birds. They have distinct personalities, recognize each other, and enjoy socializing. They’re affectionate and even make a soft “purring” sound, typically a sign of contentment.
As Animal Outlook’s investigations have shown, like the ones undertaken at a Foster Farms turkey hatchery in California and at Hargin Inc., a breeding farm in Minnesota, turkeys suffer horrendously throughout their brief lives.
Turkeys are forced to live in squalid conditions inside windowless, warehouse-like sheds. They cannot express natural behaviors like roosting, flapping their wings, dust-bathing and nesting. Workers cut off of their beaks, snoods and toes without anesthesia. As fecal matter accumulates, they live, eat, and sleep breathing in air thick with ammonia, dust and fungal spores, causing a multitude of health problems like skin irritations and foot infections.
They are bred to rapidly grow to unnatural sizes, leading to painful and debilitating health issues. Often, these birds can’t even stand. Most turkeys are sent to slaughter at just five months old. Some are kept alive as “breeders” and are fed as little as possible to prevent them growing so big they die from heart disease. Due to their abnormally large size, natural mating is physically impossible, so most turkeys are artificially inseminated -- a violent, frightening process in which workers roughly grab hens by their legs, shackle them upside down and use a plastic tube to inseminate them.
The suffering of turkeys does not end once they leave the factory farm. Shockingly, there are no laws requiring turkeys to be unconscious before they are killed. While some are stunned through the use of an electric water bath, many birds are fully conscious as their throats are cut, some even burned and/or drowned alive.
We cannot let this misery continue.
In celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, all donations up to $125,000 will be matched. Please donate today to have twice the impact in helping turkeys and all other farmed animals.
You can also help turkeys and other animals by choosing compassion and leaving them off your plate not only during the holidays, but all year round. Get started today with these plant-based Thanksgiving ideas and at TryVeg.com. You can learn more about the lives of turkeys raised for meat here.
As a non-profit organization, Animal Outlook relies on donations from caring, generous people like you. Every dollar matters. Your support makes a world of difference to farmed animals.
