I have to admit, I had no clue who Shirley Jones was. After googling her, I found out that she played the mom on The Partridge Family (hence her cheese-ball reference to partridges at the start of the clip). No matter who she is, she gives an excellent description of the lives of factory-farmed turkeys.
What always disturbs me about these videos, besides the blatent abuse, is the fact that people are eating these sickly, diseased-looking animals. I mean, their feathers are falling out, they have open wounds, they are flapping around on the ground unable to stand up. If I were to eat meat, I certainly wouldn’t want it to look like that! Gross.
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Here’s a transcript of the video, though I’d recommend actually watching the video instead of just reading this – the images accompanying these words are much more descriptive than the words themselves:
I’m Shirley Jones, with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, with an important message about cruelty to animals. I have a special fondness for birds, and not just partridges, by the way. All birds feel pain and fear, so all of them need to be protected from abuse.
Did you know that there is no federal law protecting farmed birds like chickens and turkeys from standard abuses that include mutilations and being scalded to death while they are still fully conscious? Turkeys, gentle animals that are every bit as interesting and worthy of our concern as dogs and cats, are treated especially badly.
A few years ago, the Washington Post called today’s factory-farmed turkeys “techno-turkeys” because they’re genetically manipulated and drugged-up so that they barely resemble their wild counterparts. These “turbo-birds” are so genetically and chemically manipulated that the Post described eating turkey as quote, “serving up science for dinner.”
Modern turkeys spend their entire lives cooped up amid their own excrement, never permitted to breathe fresh air, feel the sun on their backs, build nests, or do anything else that’s natural and enjoyable to them. The drugs and Frenkenstein-like breeding cause turkeys to grow more than 6 times as quickly as they would naturally. But their legs can’t keep up and their bones crack beneath them. Others die of stress, overheating, or problems caused by poor ventilation. The air that these animals are forced to inhale for their entire lives can become so concentrated with ammonia that it burns turkeys’ eyes, throats, and lungs with every breath. Even very young turkeys suffer heart attacks, lung collapse, and seizures, when their internal organs simply can’t support their massive, artificially induced bulk.
Cruel culling methods like beating and neck-breaking are standard in the turkey industry. During transport, turkeys are crammed into open-sided trucks and endure long journeys in all weather extremes. Millions every year freeze to death or die of heat exhaustion. Traffic accidents during transport are common, especially just before Thanksgiving. Injured birds who don’t die in the accident are thrown back into the trucks to be shipped, often in severe pain from the accident, to the slaughterhouse.
At slaughter, turkeys are hung upside-down in shackles. Many arrive at the slaughterhouse with broken bones, severe bruises, and wounds. Some are still fully conscious when their throats are slit and they’re dumped into scalding hot feather-removal tanks. In slaughterhouses, suffering animals are ignored, left to languish, or tormented by workers.
Like chickens, turkeys are not included in the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, so they receive no legal protection from abuse.
Please, make your holiday meal, and every meal, one which animals can give thanks to. Try Tofurkey, or UnTurkey, or cook up a great veggie casserole. To find out more, and receive free recipes, nutritional information, and a free DVD, check out PETA’s pro-vegetarian website: GoVeg.com, or call 1-888-VEG-FOOD. Thank You.
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Breakfast: Cereal with soy milk
Lunch: Amy’s Black Bean & Vegetable Enchiladas
Dinner: Soy Chorizo tacos with cilantro and salsa verde
