Turkeys

Between 250 and 300 million turkeys are raised for slaughter every year in the U.S. – more than 46 million for Thanksgiving alone. U.S. turkey consumption, which has increased by 108 percent since 1970, was an average of 17.6 pounds per person last year.

photo: Farm Sanctuary

On factory farms, turkeys are crowded into large, dimly lit sheds that hold as many as 10,000 birds. Female turkeys raised for slaughter are typically allotted one square foot of space per bird, while toms are given little more than two square-feet, according to the National Turkey Federation’s guidelines. The overcrowded birds, who are unable to comfortably move, or exhibit natural behaviors, are driven to excessive pecking and fighting.

Instead of giving the birds more adequate living space to prevent fighting, the industry response has been to cut off the ends of the turkeys’ beaks and toes, practices known as debeaking and detoeing. These painful mutilations are performed without anesthesia and can result in excessive bleeding, infections and death.

Nothing is natural in these sheds. The birds often cannot even flap their wings and most will never see sunlight or breathe fresh air, except on their way to the slaughterhouse.

photo: Farm Sanctuary

Instead, the turkeys are forced to breathe oxygen-deficient air, full of pathogenic microbes, carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen sulfide, excretory ammonia fumes, and lung-destroying dust and dander. The high ammonia levels cause painful skin and respiratory problems for the birds.

Turkeys also suffer from unnatural breeding. They’ve been bred to grow twice as fast and twice as large as their ancestors. The strain of growing so quickly makes young turkeys susceptible to cardiovascular disease and can lead to fatal heart attacks. With legs crippled by their own weight, they can’t stand or walk to get food and water–or defend themselves from the other birds who trample them on the way to the feeding station.

The industry also has bred turkeys to have abnormally large breasts which prevent them from mounting and reproducing naturally. As a result, artificial insemination is now the sole means of reproduction on factory farms, where breeder birds are confined for months on end.

Today’s turkeys are completely unlike their wild ancestors in size and in color. Commercial turkeys are white, the natural bronze color bred out of them so their bodies are pigment-free and more palatable to consumers.

When turkeys reach slaughter weight at just 14 to 18 weeks of age, they are transported to the slaughterhouse. Workers often roughly grab turkeys by the legs and throw the birds into crates stacked on the back of trucks. The crates normally have open sides and do not protect the birds from the elements during transport. As a result, the birds may die of heat stress in the summer or freeze to death in the winter. Turkeys and other farm animals may be legally transported for up to 28 hours without food, water or rest.

photo: Farm Sanctuary

At the slaughterhouse, fully conscious turkeys are hung by their feet from metal shackles on a moving rail. The first station on most poultry slaughter assembly lines is the stunning tank, where the turkeys’ heads are submerged in an electrified bath of water. Stunning procedures are not monitored and are often inadequate, leaving the fully conscious birds to continue along the assembly line. Some slaughterhouses do not bother to attempt to render these birds unconscious. This is horrifically immoral and perfectly legal: poultry are excluded from protection under the Animal Welfare Act of the Human Slaughter Act, which requires that animals be stunned prior to slaughter.

The next step in slaughter is slashing the turkeys’ throats, usually with a mechanical blade. Blood begins rushing out of their bodies. Inevitably, the blade misses some turkeys, who then proceed to the next station on the assembly line: the scalding tank. Here, they are submerged in boiling hot water, fully alive and conscious.

And so, again the recurring theme: a brutal end to a miserable existence for the billions of innocents on factory farms.