Turkeys Turned Meat-Machines

by Steve Hall (Originally published in the December 1996 Issue of Shared Vision magazine)

"We degrade other life, we destroy a sense of kinship with the living world, we alienate ourselves from all of nature — all to keep up some old habits and appetites." — Jim Mason

As millions of Canadians sit down to a turkey feast this holiday season, few will think about the history of this bird and how it got to their plate. But the turkey's story is an important one because, like the slaughter of the buffalo or the driftneting of the oceans, it demonstrates the extent to which our society has removed itself from nature.

We associate turkeys with chickens but they are actually more closely related to pheasants and partridges. The "wild" turkey was indigenous to the area that is now the southern United States and Mexico. It was first domesticated by the people of this region some 2000 years ago. When the conquistadors landed in the 15th century they were introduced to the turkey by these indigenous people. In fact, according to Vince Staton, Columbus was the first European to see a turkey, and also to eat one, when he was invited to a feast in what is now Honduras on August 14, 1493. When they went back to Europe, the conquistadors took some of the birds with them and the meat soon became popular. It is believed that the bird was eventually brought to England by merchants trading out of the eastern Mediterranean which was then part of the Turkish empire. Some think the "turkey bird" may have got its name because of these "Turkish" merchants.

The bird became a staple at English Christmas dinners and when the Virginia colonists crossed the ocean in the early 17th century, they brought the tradition with them and adopted the bird for Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts. Benjamin Franklin even wanted the turkey to be the United States' national bird instead of the eagle because it was native to every one of the 13 states in the union at the time.

Back in those pre-Columbian times more than 10 million "wild" turkeys freely roamed the forests and plains of the southern part of the continent. They lived up to 15 years on a diet of nuts, acorns, seeds, grains and grass. Turkeys flew short distances, mostly to roost in trees, but generally they walked or ran. They were in fact one of the fastest birds on Earth, often reaching speeds up to 50 km/h. But because of habitat loss and massive hunting few of these wild turkeys remain today. Instead, thanks to factory farming and genetic engineering, hundred's of millions of turkeys live a much shorter, more brutal and vastly different life than that of their ancestors.

Factory farming is an industrial process that applies the philosophy and practices of mass production to animal farming. According to one insider at the Butterball Turkey Company, "the turkey business is the most high-technical of all the animal operations."

Except for a few small cases, the turkey business is completely industrialized. Gone are the days of turkeys ranging free in yards pecking at the grass. Instead they spend their entire lives in large windowless sheds with wood shavings on the floor that are never cleaned of wastes. There are usually 10,000 or so birds to a shed with about 3 square feet per bird. Lighting is kept low to reduce aggression between the closely packed birds. Foot ulcerations that cause lameness often develop because the birds constantly stand in the wet, dirty litter. Ammonia and other irritating gases rising from this filth cause airborne germs and the air pollution results in respiratory problems. Respiratory diseases such as colibacillosis, fowl cholera, avian influenza, past eurella and turkey coryzasis are responsible for almost half of all death losses - turkeys who don't even make it to slaughter. As in the chicken broiler industry, turkeys are often debeaked which involves slicing off about one third of the beak with a red hot blade when the bird is around five days old. This is done to minimize injury when, due to the lack of space, the birds peck at one another as a result of stress induced aggression. Studies have found that the pain caused from this procedure is prolonged and possibly indefinite.

By far, the biggest innovation in turkey production occurred in the 1950s when producers started genetically altering and selectively breeding turkeys because of consumer demand for more breast meat. This genetic altering raises the question of genetic vulnerability. According to Dr. Roy Crawford, a recognized authority on the development of the Canadian meat turkey, "...the gene pool is so small that one catastrophe like a major disease could wipe them out." Today's heavy-breasted turkeys have been genetically altered for rapid growth and weight gain to such an extent that many have trouble supporting their own weight and can't move about normally. The result is problems of lameness and infections of leg and hip joints. The birds have also been changed so much that they can no longer reproduce naturally and artificial insemination has now become the sole method of reproduction for turkeys raised for food.

In the 1970's the industry adopted the "stud farm concept" in which males and females are isolated. The semen is "milked" from the male and injected into the female. To milk the semen, a worker catches the tom by the legs, puts him upside-down on his neck and chest on a work bench, places his legs in padded clamps and exposes the bird's vent. Another worker squeezes the vent until it opens up and the white semen oozes out. That worker then sucks up a few drops in a glass tube and, bird by bird, slowly fills a syringe. The syringe is then taken to the hen's area. There, one worker "breaks" the hen by holding her breast down, legs down and tail up so as to also expose her vent. An inseminator then inserts a tube and either injects a shot of semen or blows it through with his own breath. This obviously stressful situation is forced upon the birds weekly and is completely foreign to their natural mating instincts.

During mating season in the wild, a tom forms a territory in which approximately 5 hens move freely in and out of. After they mate, the hen finds a secluded spot within the territory to brood her eggs which hatch in the spring. A few weeks after they hatch, the young turkeys can fly and roost with their mothers in trees. The hens and their young stay closely bonded until the next year's mating season begins. In contrast, during a baby turkey's first 3 hours of life at the factory farm "they are squeezed for sexing, their toes are removed and they are injected, vaccinated and debeaked" (Turkey World, Ap/May 1993).

Instead of a natural diet of nuts, acorns, grains and grass, these factory farmed turkeys can look forward to high nutrient feed additives to help them gain weight fast. The fats and oils in the feed often come from slaughterhouse floor leftovers and sometimes even from industrial by-product waste. In one case in the United States, the FDA traced PCB residues found in turkey meat to the bird's feed which contained waste oils from a chemical plant's scum pond. Along with these feed additives, the birds are also injected with growth hormones to speed up growth and antibiotics to prevent disease.

After only 4 months, 80 percent of turkeys will have reached the right size to be grabbed by the legs, carried upside-down, jammed into crates and transported to slaughter houses. Easily frightened, the birds often suffer injuries and die as a result of poor handling and extreme weather conditions during transport. Once at the slaughter house, the top-heavy birds (many of whom are already suffering from painfully diseased legs and hip joints) are hung upside down for a time before being stunned by having their heads and necks dragged through an electrically charged water bath. In many cases, pre-stun shocks can occur as other body parts like wings touch the water before the heads. Some operations use hand held stunners which are even less effective in inducing cardiac arrest. After being stunned, the turkeys' throats are cut and the birds are placed in a scalding tank which loosens the feathers for plucking. An independent Canadian study has revealed that 70 percent of poultry are likely to regain consciousness before they are knifed and scalded. This is probably due to the fact that we have lower voltage and shorter stunning time regulations than in Europe or England.

In Canada approximately 20 million turkeys a year are produced and slaughtered in this manner for consumption. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that in 1996 more than 297 million turkeys will have been slaughtered in that country. In the UK, 35 million are slaughtered with 16.5 million, or 47 percent of them, killed just for one day - Christmas. It is hard to imagine that we can sustain these kinds of numbers which already seem inconceivable.

A healthier alternative to red meat?

What exactly is the end result of this intense mass production in terms of the quality of the food? Well, a roasted turkey leg contains 72 mg. of cholesterol and is 47 percent fat (more than many cuts of beef). Even though turkey hot dogs are labeled "80 percent fat free," that is by weight not nutritional content. Nutritionally, 80 percent of their calories come from fat. Most government guidelines advise that you get no more than 30 percent of your calories from fat.

Turkey meat is also an excellent environment for salmonella, compylobacter and other harmful bacteria which can be passed on to you when you eat it. All those chemicals and drugs used during production can also pose a risk to you. According to Canadians for the Ethical Treatment of Food Animals: "Fewer than one percent of food animals are tested for growth hormones and sulpha, let alone drug residues from medicated feeds." In the United States, the USDA used an experimental method for detecting residues and found that 20 percent of turkey meat tested contained residues of an illegal drug called dibutyltin dilaurate, a potentially carcinogenic compound. Blackhead is a common disease in factory farmed turkeys. Until 1988, the antibiotics dimetridazole and ipronidazole were used to treat it even though both had been shown to cause cancer and mutations. According to Jim Mason and Peter Singer the turkey industry has even used other injections containing flavourings and phosphates to improve both the taste and texture of the meat. Unfortunately few people who eat turkey realize the extent of drugs and chemicals used to produce it.

However, recently in BC an Animal Rights group claimed to have injected turkeys in stores with a poison in an irresponsible effort to get people to eat less turkey at Thanksgiving. This did receive a lot of media coverage and rightly provoked much public concern. But the fact that these genetically altered turkeys had already received numerous injections of chemicals and drugs during production was lost on most people. Very little is reported about these chemicals and how their residues might affect human health. I certainly don't condone this kind of urban terrorism in any way but its irony does show how far removed we are from how our food is produced.

This detachment of ourselves from the animals who feed us is a symptom of our greater distancing from nature and the other animals we share this planet with. With the turkey, we have genetically altered an animal that used to roam free and live up to 15 years into and artificially inseminated machine that, after 4 months of confinement, drugs and hormones, is ready for our plate. This has a profound effect on our collective consciousness because ultimately, as Jim Mason says, "humanity's great reduction of animals has greatly reduced humanity."

Sources:

Animal Factories, Peter Singer and Jim Mason
Can you Trust a Tomato in January?, Vince Staton
Canadians for the Ethical Treatment of Food Animals
Inside the Turkey Breeding Factory, internet article, author unknown
The Plight of Poultry, Dr. Karen Davis
Vegetarian Society of the UK
US Department of Agriculture
Agriculture Canada
Talking Turkey: How gene wizards built today's bird, Toronto. Star Dec. 1, 1995
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Animals Voice Magazine, Vol 4 Num 2
Dr. Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns
Animal Alliance Canada