Happy Friendsgiving!
Hello, Everyone! I know that I’m a little too late for many, but for the people who have not yet bought your turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, please consider this information that I’m borrowing from One Kind Planet and PETA.
1. Turkeys are highly intelligent animals. They are sensitive, affectionate and form lasting bonds with one another; a lot like dogs! And you wouldn't eat a dog, right?
2. Turkeys are known to exhibit over 20 distinct vocalisations and they have unique voices to recognise each other.
3. Baby turkeys (poults) flock with their mother all year. Although wild turkeys roost in the trees, as poults are unable to fly for the first couple of weeks of their lives, the mother stays with them at ground level to keep them safe and warm until they are strong enough to all roost up in the safety of the trees.
4. The area of bare skin on a turkey’s throat and head vary in colour depending on its level of excitement and stress.When excited, a male turkey’s head turns blue, when ready to fight it turns red.
5. The long fleshy object over a male’s beak is called a snood.
6. The turkey is believed to have been sacred in ancient Mexican cultures. The Mayans, Aztecs and Toltecs referred to the turkey as the ‘Great Xolotl’, viewing them as ‘jewelled birds.
7. Benjamin Franklin wished to have wild turkeys as the national bird of the USA, rather than the bald eagle. He called turkeys “true American originals.” He had tremendous respect for their resourcefulness, agility, and beauty.
But in factory farms, these beautiful birds are treated with such disrespect and hatred, it’s hard to imagine that they were once loved by the ancients or a former US President. Turkeys in factory farms are raised in miserable conditions until they are about 5 or 6 months old. For those 6 months, they will not be able to do any of the things that they love to do such as running, building nests and raising their young. Wild Turkeys can actually fly and they like to roost in trees, but even if they were allowed the freedom of living outdoors in nature, domestic turkeys are bred to be so overweight that they are unable to fly and become crippled under their own weight.
For up to 6 months, these gentle, sentient birds are crammed into dark sheds with no more than 3.5 square feet of space per bird. Because they normally require lots of space to root and peck for food, they end up stressed out and start scratching and pecking each other to death. To prevent that, the workers cut off portions of their toes and beaks with hot blades and de-snood the males; ALL WITHOUT PAIN RELIEVERS.
The first time domestic turkeys will feel the sun on their backs, will be the day they are thrown on trucks bound for the slaughterhouse. They'll travel for hours without food and water, through blazing hot summers or freezing cold winters, and many won’t even survive this hellish road trip. When they finally arrive at the slaughterhouse, the unlucky survivors are literally thrown in shackles, hung upside by their crippled, fragile legs and their heads are dragged through an electrified stunning tank, which immobilizes but does not kill them. Any bird who dodges the tank will still be completely conscious when his throat is slit. If they survive a half-assed throat slit, they may still be alive when they are dunked in a tank of boiling water used for feather removal.
300 million turkeys are raised and killed for their flesh every year in the United States and have no federal legal protection. More than 45 million turkeys are killed each year at Thanksgiving alone, and more than 22 million at Christmas. Place don’t continue to be one of these numbers. Choose Vegan.
This is a video of an activist explaining what he saw when he worked undercover at a Butterball "farm", the leading distributer of Turkey meat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-L0nmoZDcc
If you are still with me, congratulations! You have a BIG HEART that is full of COMPASSION! You are probably wondering now what you can replace your turkey with. A couple of great Vegan alternatives to having a bird as your centerpiece would be:
Field Roast’s Hazlenut Cranberry Roast
http://fieldroast.com/product/hazelnut-cranberry-roast-en-croute/
Gardein’s Holiday Roast or Stuffed Turk'y
https://gardein.com/products/holiday-roast/
You can also Veganize any of your traditional sides as well by using vegan marshmallows on your yams, plant based milks and coconut cream in your desserts, dairy-free butter for your rolls, egg replacers in your baking and much much more. Please, if you need any help planning your holiday meals, do not hesitate to e-mail me!
And finally, when you are gathered around your table with your loved ones, please take a moment to remember what actually happened on the First Thanksgiving and honor the Native Americans who were captured, enslaved, tortured, “ethnically cleansed”, shot, stabbed or hacked to death and even burned alive. I know it doesn’t make you feel warm and cozy to think about things like this, but unfortunately, this is the world we live in and we shouldn’t close our eyes to the suffering of others so that we can stay comfortable. I’m not asking you to turn your holiday into a bitter guilt trip. I’m simply asking your to have compassion and respect for all other beings on this Earth and acknowledge that all life is valuable.
Peace, Love and Light
Val the Vegan