It is time to discuss Türkiye. As we put together for Thanksgiving, our nationwide vacation of gratitude, we should know that tens of millions of those birds undergo unspeakable cruelty, confined to manufacturing unit farms.
Every year, roughly 46 million turkeys are slaughtered for the Thanksgiving vacation, and the plight of those clever, socially subtle animals is exacerbated this 12 months by… RIt brought bird flu back into the country’s turkey industry. Like COVID-19, this airborne illness spreads quickly Number of farmed birds in the United States Numbers which have died or been culled from chicken flu since 2022 have exceeded 60 million.
Though trade and authorities officers declare that chicken flu doesn’t threaten public well being, it has contaminated people, and human circumstances reported since 2003 have proven an amazing variety of infections. Mortality rate 52%. Illness outbreaks in animals, exacerbated by stress, overcrowding and irresponsible overuse of antibiotics on manufacturing unit farms, pose a danger to people and different animals. This Thanksgiving, take a minute to consider a more healthy, kinder vacation.
The horrific cruelty to turkeys and different animals on manufacturing unit farms is an affront to our humanity. National survey Commissioned by the Animal Welfare Institute in 2021, it discovered that 70% of poultry shoppers oppose denying birds entry to the outside, and 63% oppose reducing off turkeys’ beaks and toes with out ache reduction, frequent practices used to maximise profitability.
Manufacturing facility-farmed turkeys, which by one estimate more than 99% Of the turkeys farmed in the US, they can not have interaction in pure behaviors, and have been bred to develop so rapidly and so massive that mating is bodily unattainable. The trade now depends on synthetic insemination for copy, which incorporates the disturbing and violent practices of “milking” flies and inseminating chickens.
Chicken flu outbreaks, which have plagued industrial poultry operations since 2020, have made issues worse, together with a reappearance this fall. In Iowa alone, greater than 127,000 turkeys were culled As a consequence of sickness since October 20.
Culling refers to killing animals earlier than slaughtering them for human consumption, and since chicken flu is extremely contagious and often deadly, farms contaminated with the illness should cull their complete herds. Manufacturing facility farms home 1000’s of birds in warehouses and are killed en masse within the best and least costly means potential, with out regard to the animals’ struggling.
Tens of millions of birds have been culled by shutting down ventilators It’s like intentionally leaving a dog in the car to die on a hot day. The animals die slowly over hours as a result of shutdown of barn air flow and elevated warmth. It was their struggling Documented in Pigs And the birds By undercover investigators
We will select to not assist such pointless struggling by placing compassion for animals, individuals, and planet on the middle of our vacation celebrations. At Farm Sanctuary, we flip the tables this Thanksgiving season, and we encourage individuals to do exactly that Accreditation of Türkiye As a substitute of consuming one. We honor and acknowledge these maligned people annually with our Turkey Celebration, the place rescued turkeys at our sanctuaries close to Los Angeles and New York are the company of honor, not the primary course, on the vacation feast.
In fact, not all of us will welcome turkey at our desk, however we will simply depart it off our plates. By selecting a Vegetarian Thanksgiving mealWe will combat cruelty and settle for a greater vacation.
Gene Burr is president and co-founder of the farm animal sanctuary and advocacy group Farm Sanctuary.
