"Turkeys need each other, and in more than just a safety-in-numbers sort of way. Researchers have found that when an individual turkey is removed from his flock, even in domesticity, he'll squawk in obvious protest until reunited with his posse. Turkeys have a refined "language" of yelps and cackles. They mourn the death of a flock member and so acutely anticipate pain that domestic breeds have had epidemical heart attacks after watching their feathered mates take that fatal step towards Thanksgiving dinner. They clearly feel and appear to understand pain."
From Robert Cohen at NotMilk.com
Giving Thanks
That you Were Not Born a Butterball Turkey: Undercover Video
Prayer for the Butterballs
From Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns
In Need of Thanksgiving Deliverance
"Turkeys are debeaked and detoed to offset the disadvantages of over-crowding leading to downgraded carcasses. Toes are amputated without anesthetic. Beaks are amputated with a hot machine blade. Research has shown that the hot blade cuts through the sensitive beak tissue causing lifelong pain and suffering in the mutilated, disfigured bird resembling human phantom limb and stump pain.
Modern turkeys are so heavy and misshapen that they must be artificially inseminated to reproduce. Obscenely, the males are "milked" of their semen by phallus manipulating teams who stick it in the upside down turkey hen's vagina with a hypodermic syringe or the operator's breath pressure blown through a tube. Artificial insemination spreads fowl cholera, a major bacterial disease of domestic turkey.
When they're between 12 and 26 weeks, turkeys are grabbed by catchers and carried by their legs upside down to the transport truck. Jammed in crates they travel for hours without food, water or protection from the weather to the slaughterhouse. There are no United States laws regulating turkey or other poultry transport. At the slaughterhouse, turkeys are torn from the crates and hung by their feet from shackles head down on a movable metal-rack -- torture for a heavy bird especially. They may or may not be stunned, whether by a hand-held stunner or an electrified water bath through which their heads are dragged."
From Nonhuman Slavery
What Does This Have To Do With Giving Thanks?
Oh... And from me - A reminder that you shouldn't forget your manners when and if you are devouring turkeys this holiday:
For those like me who have opted for kinder ways to celebrate this season - We all have untroubled hearts and heads to be thankful for... I am grateful to those who have chosen to feast instead on the abundance of compassion. Really - I am! <3
It's not too late to opt for a Vegan ThanksLiving Holiday!
4 comments:
I'm totally thankful for folks like you who make this a holiday of Thanksliving...not Deathgiving. Enjoy your holiday and thanks again for not harming anyone.
Same back at you veganelder... This may be my venting week/month - So we may be wishing each other well a few times over again --- And that's okay too.
Honestly, the more I hear and am surrounded by the turkey-killing "festivities" the more my feathers are ruffled. :/
Thanks for baring with me as I rant. :(
So great! I've been reading your blog! Love cannibal bingo. Guffawed!
Thank you D.E.M. - I'm grateful we have good stuff to glean from each other! Nothing like adding more bang in the arsenal! ;)
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