Commercial turkeys are “bred to suffer.” [View all]

[RiverLover]

It’s impossible to overstate what the modern, commercial turkey, or what’s affectionately known as the broad-breasted white, means for Thanksgiving. At least, for Thanksgiving the way we’re used to it. We wouldn’t be able to put a turkey on 88 percent of Americans’ Thanksgiving tables without it. But along the way, we’ve traded in a lot — too much, perhaps, to the point where turkey no longer deserves its place at the center of what’s supposed to be the year’s most mindful feast.

Perhaps the most commonly cited curiosity about modern turkeys is that they’re so disproportionately large, with 80 percent of their weight concentrated in their breast, that they’re no longer able to mate. The birds are so far removed from the (albeit ill-defined) ideal of “natural” that they’re only able to breed through artificial insemination. Forget flying; as a consequence of their disproportionate size, many can barely walk, or even stand upright. In the words of Suzanne McMillan, a poultry expert with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), commercial turkeys are “bred to suffer.”

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/27/stop_eating_thanksgiving_turkey_why_its_time_to_give_up_this_big_fat_holiday_travesty/

So sad.