the rix mix

Many people in supermarket tonight buying large frozen turkeys. That seemed like a gamble; what if turkeys had sold out? Listening to a ridiculous radio ad for wonderful, fresh, wholesome farm turkeys, with the noise of thousands of birds gobbling in the background, I wondered how they were prepared for human consumption.

The fully conscious turkeys are hung by their feet from metal shackles on a moving rail. The first station on most poultry slaughterhouse 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 fully conscious birds to continue along the slaughterhouse assembly line. Some slaughterhouses do not even attempt to render turkeys unconscious, as turkeys and other poultry are specifically excluded from the Humane Slaughter Act, which requires stunning.

After passing through the stunning tank, the turkeys' throats are slashed, usually by a mechanical blade, and 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, and turkeys missed by the killing blade are boiled alive.

This information comes from Adopt-a-Turkey. There is nothing on The National Turkey Federation website about how the birds are bred, raised, treated in captivity, & slaughtered. I'm not a vegetarian. I do try to remember that however we prepare, dress up or disguise meat, very few of us are willing to kill the animals. The pile of anonymous frozen butterballs in the store freezer case were all individual birds that had short miserable lives.

Occasionally, I comfort a bereaved person who lost a beloved pet dog or cat. I might even reassuringly say animals go to heaven - The Peaceable Kingdom - not because I'm certain there is a heaven but because I'm unable to reason intellectually through to a conclusion of why they would not go there; I'd have to accept the human species as the only creature worthy of redemption when I'm inclined to believe we're the only creature on this particular planet in need of redemption.

Labels: holidays