On Thanksgiving Day, when I was visiting my parents in Texas, I decided to read the Dallas Morning News as I sat waiting to eat a vegetarian meal amongst family and friends who patiently awaited two turkeys to cook. The first thing I noticed was a picture of President Barack Obama pardoning “Courage” the turkey from what the President termed “a terrible and delicious fate” on the White House dining table and sending it off to Disneyland. Every turkey’s dream come true right?
Every year since 1947 the National Turkey Federation has given a bird to the White House in what has become a holiday tradition. Twenty years ago, President H.W. Bush was the first to pardon his turkey. Since then, others have followed suit. The media always heavily publicizes the tradition and the presidents are looked at with praise and “awwwws” for their actions, but in truth, the whole ceremony is largely symbolic and silly. What’s the point of pardoning one turkey if you are not going to even talk about the benefits of a turkey-free diet or advocate for less meat consumption or at least warn people about genetically-modified meat?
According to the National Turkey Federation 48 million turkeys were eaten last Thanksgiving. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations states that 99 percent of U.S. turkeys are grown in factory farms where the genetic diversity has become so low in attempts to maximize profits by creating bigger-breasted turkeys that the turkey can no longer breed on it’s own and would, within one generation, become extinct if their breeding were not assisted by humans through artificial insemination.
I had had little time to be annoyed over the President’s cute photo-op when I saw another article on the same page, “Researchers slicing into turkey DNA” by Daniel de Vise for The Washington Post. De Vise told me that I had one more thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, “The day of the superturkey could be nigh.” It seems the industry isn’t quite happy enough with the sizes of their turkeys and the U.S. Agricultural Department has decided to award a two-year $908,000 grant to scientists at Virginia Tech to study the genome of turkeys with goals to genetically modify them to have larger breasts and plumper legs. Does anyone else see anything wrong with the fact while most of us are feeling the effects of the a problematic economy, while people are living in poverty here in America and schools, hospitals and other needed social institutions are facing serious budget cuts, that this much money is being spent for genetically modifying turkeys?
The National Turkey Federation’s Web site, EatTurkey.com, estimates that in 2009, each person in the U.S. will consume nearly 17 pounds of turkey and that in the past 30 years, consumption of turkey has doubled. Even if you don’t feel bad for the turkeys, consider the effects of factory farming on both your health, the economic health of family farms, and the degradation it causes to the environment next time you pick out a dinner bird. Remember that we have the power, when we can afford to, to vote with our dollars.
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