(In response ‘Let’s Talk Turkey,’ by Linda Lindsay, Practical Wellness, Nov/Dec edition)
Contrary to Linda Lindsay’s article, there is no such thing as a healthy holiday turkey. This tradition betrays the life-affirming spirit of giving thanks for our life, health, happiness, and holidays.
The nearly 300 million turkeys killed each year in the U.S. spend their lives crammed in large sheds with little room to move. Artificially inseminated and selectively bred to gain enormous amounts of weight, they suffer heart attacks, broken limbs, lameness, and death from their genetically–induced, accelerated growth rate.
Factory farm conditions are so harsh that the turkeys must be pumped full of antibiotics just to stay alive. Shortly after birth, they have their snoods and parts of their toes and beaks cut off with hot blades, without the use of anesthetic, to reduce damage from stress-induced aggression. They are then delivered by conveyer belt to a carousel where they get a power injection, usually of an antibiotic, whacked into the back of their necks.
The rest of their lives they are forced to endure crowding, living in their own waste, and ravaging diseases. As many as 25,000 birds may be housed in a single shed. Their eyes and lungs are burned by toxic ammoniac fumes emanating from their excrement. Conditions are so severe that about 9 percent of turkeys raised for food (or over 26 million) don’t survive long enough to make it to the slaughterhouse. After 16 weeks of misery, they are hung on a conveyer belt, their throats are cut, and they are dumped – sometimes still fully conscious – into scalding water to strip their feathers.
Turkey flesh is loaded with cholesterol and saturated fats, which have been linked conclusively with an elevated risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic diseases that kill 1.3 million Americans annually. (See ‘The China Study,’ by Dr. T. Colin Campbell, 2006.)
Turkey flesh is also contaminated with deadly pathogens and antibiotics. The antibiotics are passed on to the consumer, disrupting normal growth and development. The pathogens, including Salmonella and Campylobacter, are introduced by eviscerating equipment that spills fecal matter into the cavities of the bird’s bodies. Careful adherence to U.S. Department of Agriculture warning labels and Poultry Hotline directions are required to avoid severe food poisoning, as the antibiotics administered to the birds build up the pathogens’ immunity to these powerful remedies.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the single condition for the term ‘free-range’ is that birds have access to the outdoors. All other facets of a free-range turkey’s life can be indistinguishable from the living conditions of a conventionally-raised bird.
Like all other turkeys raised for food, free-range turkeys receive no protection under the law. Turkeys – all birds, in fact – are excluded from coverage under the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. All animals raised for food are excluded from the Animal Welfare Act. It is a conveniently believed myth that animals are well treated by evolving animal welfare legislation.
These turkeys are subject to many of the same contamination issues because they are all taken to the same slaughterhouses. As line speeds in slaughterhouses increase, so does the frequency of fecal contamination.
Free-range or conventional, turkeys suffer needlessly. Here’s some real news from the landmark book, The China Study: ‘A healthy diet of fresh, organic plant based foods grown in rich soil and a lifestyle that regularly takes you outdoors is the best answer… Returning to our natural way of life in this small way provides innumerable other benefits as well.’ For all turkeys, great and small…
(Thanks to peacefulthanksgiving.org)
~ Ronnie Colby, Truckee
Response from the author:
Thanks for the statistics on the life of a conventionally-raised turkey. I couldn’t agree with you more, which is precisely why my Nov/Dec article focused on the benefits of choosing an organic turkey, raised under more humane conditions and without antibiotics or hormones. And though you’re correct that the term ‘free-range’ can be abused, the vendors listed in my article get their turkeys from two particular farms that treat their organic and free-range turkeys identically, with the exception of giving 100 percent organic feed to the organic turkeys.
But you’re right; the conventional livestock industry can be appalling. I think if more of the public witnessed a typical livestock operation or a slaughterhouse, they would think twice about eating meat. As for me, I don’t need convincing; I haven’t eaten meat, poultry or seafood for 34 years.
~ Linda Lindsay
