We are now in the midst of the holiday season and the atmosphere just seems so much more cheerful, and magical. Thanksgiving has passed and the anticipation for Christmas is growing, as is our eagerness to finally take a break from school and go home to our families. When thinking about this time of the year, we think about warmth. The warm colors of the leaves and the flickering flames of the fire. The cinnamon and peppermint scented candles that mix harmoniously with the woodsy smell of a freshly cut Christmas tree. The sensation of warmth that spreads from your chest while you glance around at all your loved ones in one room laughing and celebrating.
However, I think everyone can agree that the preparation for this joyous gathering can be a bit stressful and frustrating. There is a lot of time spent planning, prepping and cooking. It can be rough. But let’s go even further behind the scenes of our seemingly innocent, happy gatherings. Looking at the most generic Christmas photos of families smiling and sitting at a long table, it is not hard to notice that at the center of the table is a big, golden, glistening chunk of meat or even whole bird. It is a tradition for the majority of families to have turkey on thanksgiving and ham on Christmas so the number of animals that are eaten adds up – more than 45 million turkeys are killed each year for Thanksgiving alone, and more than 22 million die at Christmas. So as we are busily shopping for gifts or stressing about family drama, let’s see how these birds are preparing for the exciting Christmas day and end up as our holiday centerpieces…
The “beautiful,” “natural” birth of these birds start inside large incubators. In nature, they stay with their mothers for up to the first five months of their lives. The mother turkey is very bonded to her babies and often courageously defends her family against predators. On factory farms, they never see their mothers or feel the warmth of a nest and are quickly moved into filthy, windowless sheds with thousands of other turkeys, where they will spend the rest of their lives.
This unnatural, cramped space causes stress to the birds and often they lash out and kill one another. To prevent them for losing their valuable assets, farmers cut off the turkeys’ toes, beaks and the males’ snoods, which is the flap of skin under the chin. And since these creatures are obviously not humans with feelings, they aren’t offered any pain relievers. Imagine having the skin under your chin cut off with a pair of scissors. Millions of turkeys don’t even make it through the first few weeks of their lives because these stress-induced conditions causes them to stop eating and they starve to death.
There are a lot of large families in America and that calls for large turkeys. Turkeys are drugged and genetically modified to grow as big as possible, as fast as possible to make profits. Turkeys used to weigh around 17 pounds and now they weigh a shocking 28 pounds. They are so obese that they cannot reproduce naturally. All the turkeys born in the United States today on factory farms are conceived through artificial insemination. Even with all these scientific procedures, some turkeys still do not grow to the desired standards so they are killed by the farm operators or by their own weight.
Next, at the age of 5 to 6 months old, they are sent to the slaughterhouse.
In the slaughter house, they are hung upside down. Then their heads get ducked into electrified water… before their throats are slit. Next, their beautiful, soft feathers are taken away from them as they get dunked in scaled-hot water. And that turns into…
It’s sad how this is a familiar sight for people and yet it still isn’t enough for people to realize how disgusting it is. Just because it was cooked and all you see is the golden, glorified version of a body, does not make it okay. We call it pork, beef or the Thanksgiving Day turkey but really it should called pig flesh, cow flesh and turkey flesh. How would you like cow flesh to be cooked? Would you like a slice of another living animal’s body? Do you think a 5 pound turkey carcass is enough for our family to eat?
These beautiful, gentle birds are very social and playful. They love to have their feathers stroked and like to cluck and gobble along with others all day long. All the happiness I described before that occurs during the holidays is never going to be worth the millions of other living beings’ lives we take. While we are celebrating the gathering of our families, we are tearing away millions of babies from their mothers. As we are giving thanks for all that we have, we are giving no thoughts to the millions of lives we have ended. Don’t be fooled by the many ways we’ve come to glamorize the slaughtering and eating of animals. Just because it’s sandwiched in between two buns or covered lettuce, it is still another life. So before you eat that piece of glistening Christmas Day ham, think about what you’re really eating – a slice of warmed up flesh of another fellow species who was born in the same life as you, except they never really had one.