December 1996
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Shared Vision December 1996 |
Turkeys turned meat-machinesAs millions of Canadians sit down to a turkey feast this holiday season, few will think about the life 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 drift-netting 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 what is now the southern United States and Mexico, and was first domesticated by the people of this region some 2,000 years ago. When the conquistadors landed there in the 15th century, they were introduced to the turkey by these indigenous people. (Columbus is thought to be the first European to see and eat a turkey, when he was invited to a feast in 1493 in what is now Honduras.) When they returned 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 may have got its name from these Turkish merchants. Turkeys 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 Thanks-giving 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 ten million wild turkeys freely roamed the forests and plains of the southern part of the continent. They lived for 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 of up to 50km/h. But because of habitat loss and extensive hunting, few of these wild turkeys remain today. Instead, due to factory farming and genetic engineering, hundreds of millions of turkeys live a short, brutal and vastly different life to 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-tech of all the animal operations.” With few exceptions, 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. There are usually about 10,000 birds to a shed, with about three 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 are constantly standing in the wet, dirty litter. Ammonia and other irritating gases rising from this filth cause airborne germs, resulting in respiratory problems such as colibacillosis, fowl cholera, avian influenza, past eurella and turkey coryzasis. These diseases are responsible for almost half of all turkey deaths—turkeys who don’t even make it to slaughter. As in the chicken broiler industry, turkeys are often de-beaked —a process 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 shown that the pain caused by 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 turkey market, “...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 lameness and infections of the 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 1970s, 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 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 and out of which approximately five hens move freely. 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 three hours of life at the factory farm, “they are squeezed for sexing, their toes are removed and they are injected, vaccinated and de-beaked” (Turkey World, April/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 and antibiotics. After only four months, 80% 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 which are already suffering from painfully-diseased legs and hip joints) are hung upside-down for a time before being stunned in 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% 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. In Canada, approximately 20 million turkeys are produced and slaughtered in this manner for consumption every year. 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% of them, killed just for the sake of one day—Christmas. It is hard to imagine that these kinds of numbers can be sustained.
A healthier alternative to red meat? Turkey meat is also an excellent environment for salmonella, campylobacter and other harmful bacteria which can be passed on to humans. All those chemicals and drugs used during production can also pose a risk. 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% 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, co-authors of Animal Factories, 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. This kind of urban terrorism can certainly not be condoned in any way, but its irony does show how far removed we are from knowing how our food is produced. This detachment from the animals who feed us is a symptom of our greater distan-cing 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 for up to 15 years, and converted it into an artificially-inseminated machine that, after four 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.” Steve Hall is a freelance writer and regular volunteer with EarthSave Canada. For more info call EarthSave, 731-5885.
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