Every year at Thanksgiving hundreds of thousands of turkeys are slaughtered to celebrate the colonists’ survival in the new homeland. Most of these animals were raised under intensive factory farm conditions. A few days after birth, thousands of baby turkeys are taken from their mothers and placed in long, windowless, environmentally-controlled sheds to live out the remainder of their lives until slaughter.
In factory farm conditions, turkeys undergo acute physical, social and psychological stress and deprivation. Unable to establish a normal social order in the grossly overcrowded quarters, which toward the end of their lives may amount to as little as one half foot of floor space per bird, they become aggressive, even cannibalistic. To counteract this, producers dim the lights during the birds’ last weeks of life to near darkness. De-beaking of turkeys, a demonstrably painful operation is now the general rule.
Animal suffering is not the only issue involved in the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, however. There are also the problems of human health and world hunger. More then 50 percent of the antibiotics produced in this country go into animal feeds. In the case of poultry almost 100 percent are given antibiotics to counteract the risk of disease. Studies of food animal tissues have shown frequent illegally high levels of antibiotics.
While Americans consume turkey on Thanksgiving Day, thousands upon thousands of third world people will be starving for want of adequate protein and nutrition. And there is hunger in our local population as well, as evidenced by the need and numbers that local food banks are seeing. It is also very sad to note how frequently animal flesh foods are recalled and disposed of after animals suffer and die in vain.
Medical and holistic practitioners are recommending mostly vegetarian foods and vegan restaurants are growing and very popular. We can no longer afford to be so parochial in our diet and oblivious to the world situation. The use of land for raising animals for slaughter, land which could be used for growing high-protein vegetable crops, and the feeding of high-protein foods to food animals, which could be used instead for feeding hungry people, is not in the spirit of a true World Thanksgiving Day.
For more information contact goveg.com
Patricia Marks
Wilkes-Barre