Feasting Day

To many in the U.S. tomorrow is thanksgiving or as my wife and I like to call it, "Feasting Day". A celebration of food and family. We will be spending it with her parents and having an almost completely vegan feast. I say almost because her parents will be dining on a meat dish of some sort while we are enjoying her delicious seitan roast. Thanksgiving here in the U.S. is all about the turkey and it is to the point that the President actually chooses one to "spare" from the slaughter on this holiday, which seems sort of silly given the millions who have been ruthlessly and brutally killed to satisfy the cravings of the masses.

For those that know me, I have been vegan for about two years now, and have come to see the strong link between my lifestyle choice and my philosophy on life. There are a lot of ethical issues concerning the use and abuse of animals, too many for me to include here without people thinking "tl;dr", so I think I should focus on the thing closest to this holiday, namely the turkey. First, there is a general conception that people are basically doing the bird a favor by eating it because they are "stupid". While this statement seems to be true based on behavior exhibited by farmed turkeys, it's far from accurate based on the animals natural behaviors. Farmed turkeys are bred fast to be fat and docile. I've heard stories about turkeys standing outside in the cold and freezing to death with an open barn in front of them. The effects of conditioning are pretty astounding, even humans can show this sort of ridiculous behavior if they have been conditioned properly. The wild turkey (where farm turkeys are bred from) does not behave this way and is in fact intelligent and social. So, no we are not doing any favors to the animal by killing it.

So that makes this about gluttony and fulfilling our desire to consume them. To make this palatable desire a reality, turkeys are bred extremely quickly and kept well confined to limit the amount of fat loss. Crammed in dimly lit barns and standing in their own filth many die before slaughter due to disease and stress. The image of the turkey that you see is not the reality:

Image


Reality


The fact is that most people simply don't care about the suffering of these animals because "that's what they are there fore." But what if one asks themselves why that is the case? Consider a dog, wouldn't it be considered animal abuse to raise a dog in such an environment? Yes, it would. There are strict laws against puppy mills. Why is the plight of the turkey so different? People own dogs or cats and think it's awful when someone abuses them, but then they go back to eating that steak in front of them. One can say that a pet becomes part of the family and so it is different in some way. Then we must conclude that is because of how it is raised and not based on species. But then let me present this scenario, someone owns a dog and a cat. The cat is raised as part of the family, given attention, love and kept inside. The dog is raised as livestock, fed to become fat and kept at a distance from the family to be slaughtered for meat later. Most people probably would say that is terrible to treat a dog that way. Why? What is so different? Nothing, that's what. It's all a matter of conditioning. It's someone telling you this animal is for eating and this animal is for loving.

By participating in this kind of behavior, you are showing species-ism. Just as terrible as racism or sexism, but ignored by most. Think about that as you sit down for dinner tomorrow. Think about the life that bird in front of you likely led and the slaughter it had to endure so that you could consume its flesh for no other reason than your own aesthetic pleasure. Was the trade off worth it? If on some level you feel that it might be wrong, then congratulations because you still have a shred of humanity left, but if no part of you cares then I challenge you to examine yourself and realize how apathy leads to so much suffering.