If given a choice, there’s no way Abby would’ve chosen the short, cruel life she is forced to endure, subjected to immense suffering, farmed for her eggs, then ultimately ending up on someone’s dinner plate.
Sadly for Abby, and millions of other turkeys just like her, Thanksgiving is not a time to celebrate. It’s the reason her life will be short and filled with suffering.
Raised with thousands of other turkeys in a dark, filthy shed, Abby was bred for the sole purpose of laying eggs. She’ll never know her babies, who will be killed for meat.
Watch our newest short film, “Life of a Farmed Turkey”, which uses hidden camera footage to expose the harsh realities for turkeys born into the animal
agriculture industry.
While Abby may only live for a year, her life will be painful and difficult. She was selectively bred to produce more meat and she has trouble walking because she’s so grossly obese due to unnaturally rapid growth. She’s also at risk of skeletal disease, organ failure, and heart attack.
Because of her deformed body, Abby is not able to mate naturally. Instead she’s forcibly, artificially inseminated at least once a week by being violently shackled and having a plastic tube shoved into her.
Abby will never see the outdoors. She’ll never fly or run. Instead she will live on waste-soaked floors. She’ll likely suffer from skin irritations and eye infections, but she will probably never receive veterinary care.
Abby will lay approximately 130 eggs over the course of 28 weeks, but she’ll never meet any of her babies.
Emma was just one of Abby’s many babies. As soon as she hatched she was thrown onto a conveyor belt to a sorting machine with thousands of other newly hatched birds. Many of these birds get mangled or caught in the machinery. Those who are injured are tossed into containers and left to suffer for hours on end.
Emma likely went through painful debeaking and detoeing processes, without any pain relief. Not all babies survive to this point, and those who are unwanted or fatally injured are ground up alive or gassed to death.
At three to five months old, Emma had grown large enough to slaughter. In her last moments she was hung upside down by her legs on the slaughter line and paralysed by electric stunning before her throat was slit. Stunning is not always effective, and some birds miss the blade, so there is a chance Emma was conscious when she entered the scalding water designed to remove her feathers.
The suffering of Abby, Emma and almost 250 million turkeys each year only exists because the animal agriculture industry makes a profit through exploitation. We have the power to help turkeys like Abby and Emma by refusing to buy the cruelty this industry is selling.
For a donation of $100 or more, you'll be entered to win one of five copies of HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene by Jo-Anne McArthur and Keith Wilson. Joaquin Phoenix, who wrote the forward for this book says "The photojournalists represented in HIDDEN have entered some of the darkest, most unsettling places in the world. The images they have captured are a searing reminder of our unpardonable behavior towards animals and will serve as beacons of change for years to come."
Thank you to Dr. Bronner’s for their support of this matching campaign.
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.
