Many times I'm told I should stop protecting animals and start protecting people.

I'm deeply
concerned about the poor/the children/the elderly/the sick and those persecuted because of race, color and
creed. Their suffering is my suffering, but at least they can talk for their own defense; animals cannot!-C.
Richard Calore, American Author and Animal Activist

Around this time of the year, many, many individual turkeys,

around 40 million individuals a year, suffer and die, just on the time around
thanksgiving. It is a terrible time for them. There is no mercy, nor any
compassion, given to these innocent creatures. They are simply treated like
commodities and have their lives, emotions, minds, and bodies, completely
and utterly broken under the brutality, callousness, and indifference of human
beings. I have decided to write this article to help give them a voice. I know
that If I were about to die, I would want someone to speak out for me, and try
to make a difference for me.

From the beginnings of their lives in

indifferent and pitiless hatcheries, waiting to
be sent to their miserable lives in factory
farms.

This is a machine where the chicks are callously and painfully being debeaked. This is done
without anesthetic, or any kind of pain reliever. Later on, their toes are also removed in a way that
is equally painful and without any kind of relief from suffering, including bleeding, chipping, or
fractures. The fact that they are having their natural bodies being deformed and mutilated in the
first place, especially at such a young and tender age, is already corrupt enough.

To their time as adolescent turkeys wasted

languishing in cruel and overcrowded farms.
Debeaking is a common act of violence and mutilation forced upon many farmed
birds, but especially turkeys and chickens. This merciless practice of is enforced upon them because
otherwise, the stress of the cramped, filthy, noisy, and overcrowded conditions of the filthy farms
theyre living in would otherwise kill all of them. Turkeys, as well as chickens and other farmed
birds, decide their social status based upon a pecking order, so softly pecking at one another, for
healthy turkeys and chickens, would be a normal social behavior. But because there are too many
birds to make any kind of society or community, and the stress of the environment is overwhelming,
turkeys, chickens, and other birds, peck at each other incessantly, obsessively and constantly, and
thus are debeaked and detoed to prevent them from killing each other and bruising and injuring
each other.
However, the primary
concern to those raising them is usually the degradation of the held quality of the products their
bodies will be deformed and mutilated into after reaching the slaughterhouses, and not their
suffering and death. There is no excuse for this kind of brutality in the first place, so the simple
answer would be to never force them to live or breathe in these horrid conditions to begin with. I
see this treatment as a testament to the fact that we humans have an incredibly shallow and vapid
understanding of other animals. There would be no way to inflict these abominations and atrocities
upon them unless we thought of them as being absolutely meaningless and without any purpose,
dignity, or beauty.

A genetically created white turkey, suffering in a filthy and

abominable farm. Turkeys in this farm like In the above image are stuck living in inches upon
inches of their own waste, and have no way out of their suffering and misery in these terrible places.
There is a high risk of disease from the filth, feces, mold, and other disgusting things in their
environments. Because they are crammed together, they are also under threat of catching diseases
from other turkeys. Many of these turkeys may have to be fed antibiotics to keep them from

suffering from diseases.

This is not an isolated case, nor something rare in the
industry; this cruelty has been going on for decades. To meet the enormous demand for the animals
flesh and body parts like legs, wings, thighs, and necks, as many as 40 million individual turkeys
every year are bred, and in a single shed on the average modern farm, there may be hundreds of
thousands of turkeys. It is not just a handful running around a barn, which is far too small and
unrealistic for the massive amounts that are brought into existence, all for the sole purpose of being
subjected to a mercilessly enforced death. It is also not realistic to expect any small amount of birds
to satiate the desires of around over 300 million Americans.
As many as 300 million turkeys are killed in total every year.
The number of turkeys is not the only problem. These turkeys are bred to grow five times faster
than would be natural or normal for any turkey, or any living being to grow. In particular, the
breasts of turkeys grow grotesquely overweight before their young bodies are ready to handle it.
Many turkeys, during this terrible time of their lives,
may actually just cease to be able to walk, or drop dead before they are even able to be transported
to their deaths. The health and respiratory problems, the issues with their bones and tissues
carrying their weight, in addition to the already filthy, loveless, stressful, overcrowded and terrible
living environments they are in is often enough to kill them by itself. No matter what scale of the
farm, there are far to many turkeys to ever be raised in any comfortable manner. Even if they could
be raised comfortably, it wouldnt even matter.
At the end, they would just be killed, denying
them their right and desire to live a happy, natural, and normal life. Killing and enforcing death is
the most extreme act of violence, and the right to live is a simple desire of all life. Killing a turkey,
just as killing any kind of animal, is something which is by its very definition, nature, and essence
unmerciful, brutal, and cruel. They would also experience the exact same transportation and killing
techniques as birds from any type of farm would.

To being packed up and treated like commodities on

trucks.
No animals in particular are protected when it comes to transportation.
Turkeys and chickens are treated absolutely the worst, along with other farmed birds, as birds in
general are not even given attempted protection by the law. These animals are thought of as units or
commodities by the industry. They have numbers put onto their ears and bodies, are crammed into
tiny crates, are separated from their mothers, siblings, and young, and are raised and fed in the
first place purely to be killed and turned into products. They are transported in any weather, hot,
cold, snowing, raining, through hail, and on any kind of road, whether it is bumpy or smooth,
because there is simply no concern for their well-being beyond what their bodies may provide when
turned into products.
There is no room for love, compassion, or any real, genuine respect, or
consideration In all of that mess, and there is no way for them to have peace as long as they are
being farmed. The sort of raising that takes place with them, and the fact that they are called
livestock which is an extremely objectifying term, is testament enough to this. I dont think they
are even considered living beings. How do you truly love, cherish, and respect a being, and know
that they have a life that is precious to them, when that being is referred to and thought of as
someones property or a product?
To think that there would be any active attempt to save or relieve
the suffering of turkeys, chickens, or any farmed animals, which would be highly inconvenient to

the industry, is very nave. Their only real freedom is in an absolute right to have, at the very least,
their lives, to have their young, or to have their mothers, and other individuals they care about, and
their freedom from humankinds exploitation.

To being
painfully, repetitively, and mercilessly killed in
slaughterhouses and abattoirs, turkeys are never treated
with dignity or respect they deserve, or ever given the right
to live in peace or without human-enforced torment or
exploitation for a single moment of their lives.
A group of turkeys, swinging upside down and undoubtedly terrified from the noise and
smell of blood and fear around them, in an assembly line. Most turkeys today are killed when they are only 60
to 140 days old. They are still basically babies, without a mother or anyone to care for them, being brutally

destroyed and killed over something petty and arbitrary that they do not even understand. Imagine if you
were screaming for your life in a place where no one could hear you and that was legal.
What only makes this worse is the fact that turkeys and other birds, especially
chickens, are not in any way, at all protected by law from cruelty in slaughter. Any amount of abuse, cruelty,
inaccuracy, clumsiness, or apathy from the workers can regularly spell immense injury and torment, even
more than they were already being forced to experience. Farming is animal cruelty, abuse, and torment

by its very nature. Any kind of forced suffering, death, or torment upon an animal can be
described as such, regardless of what purpose its for or why anyone wants it to happen.

Here are ten very good

reasons to spare a turkeys life this
thanksgiving, and to choose a harmless and
compassionate alternative instead.
Ten
Reasons to Skip Serving Turkey this
Thanksgiving
By Lori Zito on This Dish is Veg
Lori's Top Ten Reasons to Skip the Turkey this Year
1. You are what you eat. When you choose to eat foods that nourish your body
AND soul (not ones that contain the energy of suffering and cruelty they
endured) you will feel extraordinary.
2. You will have more room on your plate for all the other good stuff.
3. You can have an extra glass of wine without falling into the turkey-induced
slumber.
4. It might stimulate some VERY interesting conversation at your dinner table.

5. You will set an example that may create a ripple effect and save hundreds of
animals' lives.
6. You won't have to choose between the "light or dark meat"... that's a really gross
question when you think about it anyway!
7. You will give your body a reprieve from gobs of cholesterol, saturated fats,
and hormones. Turkey is NOT a health food. Turkey is loaded with fat and
cholesterol, and it has zero fiber. Turkey is also frequently tainted with
salmonella and campylobacter bacteria.
8. Less calories at dinner leaves more calories for dessert!
9. Dining sans animals ensures that the food on your plate wasn't stuck in a
filthy, cramped shed for its entire life, standing in its own waste, with its toes
and beak cut off and never being able to stretch its wings open. Does that
sound like something to celebrate?
10. You will be doing a tremendous service for the environment. The bodily
wastes produced by turkeys and other animals raised for meat production are
130 times greater than the bodily wastes of the entire American population.
Although I guarantee that you will still have a ridiculously delicious feast when
you leave the turkey off your plate, Thanksgiving isn't about the food anyway. It's
about gratitude.
By the way, if you still want to spend that money you have been putting aside for
the holiday turkey, why not adopt one instead?! This list is very informative and
respectful to both turkeys and to the people reading it, but the writer left out just
two things; the impact of the farming of turkeys and other animals upon humans,
and also additional negative effects cast upon the environment by cruel and brutal
animal farming.
"The livestock population of the United States today consumes enough
grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population of
the country. We feed these animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and
over 95% of the oats... Less than half the harvested agricultural acreage
in the United States is used to grow food for people. Most of it is used to
grow livestock feed... -John Robbins, Vegan Author of the Award-Winning
Book Diet for a New America

The death toll of

holidays like thanksgiving, and the eating of animals brutalized
flesh, dried blood, the growth hormones and chemicals embedded
in their flesh, and dead fat in general does not only come upon
turkeys and other animals however. It also falls upon the
environment and mankind, like an unseen haze of death and
suffering. The death toll of these animals, and the number In
total, in just America by itself, 10 billion animals are killed every
year so that their flesh can be served in grocery stores,
restaurants, public eateries, fast food places, and homes all over
the country, all to satiate the appetite that around 300 million
Americans have for their flesh. This death toll not only speaks of
unspeakable amounts of animal suffering, abuse, and neglect,
gone unheard and unnoticed, but also of a great amount of
wreaked upon the earth and upon mankind.
The
collective amount of food in the form of grain, and water eaten
and drunken by turkeys and other farmed birds and animals in
general, takes an enormous strain on the crop soil, and on the
water supply of not only America, but also other nations.
Much of
the feed and grain, as well as the water that these animals drink,
is sourced from other countries, many of them being poorer than
America. These grains and this water could easily go into satiating
the hunger and quenching the thirst of countless human beings
whom are starving and living without clean water all throughout
the world, including those in our own country. This is not the only
thing however. Imagine if 10 billion people lived in tiny, crowded
spaces all over the country, and had no sewer systems. They
would produce a whole lot of waste, with no kind of intelligent or
efficient means to get rid of that waste.
This is the reality of
having 10 billion conscious, living, breathing, and feeling beings
kept as commodities, brought into existence and life merely for
the human-devised purpose of being killed and cut and mutilated
into small pieces of themselves which are then called products.

The waste of animals is often disposed of in careless and

threatening ways, such as being released into the air, dumped
into waterways, and heaped into the soil. This has resulted in the
death and suffering of many wild animals, as well as a great
amount of discomfort and severe health detriment of those in
communities around factory farms, or otherwise known as
intensive farms, where most of these animals are raised.

Turkeys
enjoying thanksgiving dinner at Farm Sanctuary. This is their right to live, and live
well, being respected. Being free to live natural, normal, happy and healthy lives is
the right of all living beings. Human or animal, it does not matter. These beautiful
turkeys have everything in the world to be thankful for, which this sanctuary has
helped to prepare and give them; life, love, happiness, and freedom. No one should
ever be deprived of these things. All beings deserve to have them.

The flesh industry, and animal farming industries in general,

are not only causing untold, uncountable suffering, death,
torment, and misery to animals, but also great harm to the
environment and people all throughout the world. People who
dont have anything to eat, and who are losing their food to feed
the farmed animals of wealthier or more powerful nations, and
those who are living in locations or areas around intensive farms,

and suffer great problems to their health, quality of life, and wellbeing from the stench, chemicals, and pollution. Besides all of this
however, please do consider yourself. Just as the list says, turkeys
and other modern factory farmed animals are injected and fed
with everything from growth hormones to keep them from being
too small for market weight, antibiotics to make sure they dont
die of disease from their filthy living conditions, and kept in
horribly small crates, or crowded, noisy, dark sheds, filling their
flesh with the chemicals of misery, torment, fear, and horror.
Please understand that your choices in what you choose to eat,
has a great on the individual beings you choose to eat, a terrible
affect on the environment, on other people, and on things on
earth as a whole, including yourself.
Lets work towards healing and respecting animals, the earth,
other people, and ourselves through our food choices. We can do
better!
A Vegan Thanksgiving Book
'Twas the Night Before
Thanksgiving By Dav Pikey
This book is
all about a group of children, who discover that after playing with eight funny,
exuberant turkeys on a farm, that the turkeys were going to be saved for
thanksgiving. Shocked and scared for the turkeys lives, they later adopt these
turkeys, and have a wonderful vegetarian thanksgiving dinner.