Conscious Choice: Adopt a New Tradition

November 2005 | Choice Eating

Adopt a New Tradition

by H. Alex Helmick

You don’t have to be a celebrity this Thanksgiving to eat like one. Or rather, not eat like one. “I like to stuff myself at Thanksgiving, not turkeys…. Adopt a turkey instead of eating one,” comedian Kevin Nealon, a former Saturday Night Live regular, said on the adoptaturkey.org website.

The Adopt-A-Turkey Project was created 20 years ago by the Farm Sanctuary group to save turkeys from inhumane factory farming practices and provide lifelong care for the birds in one of the group’s shelters in New York or California.

“If people knew how animals were raised for food, they would be less likely to eat them,” said Farm Sanctuary’s Tricia Ritterbusch.

More than 265 million turkeys were slaughtered in 2004, according to the USDA website, but there’s a growing number of diners deciding to go vegetarian, and some are even getting involved in farm animal rescue.

If you decide to rescue a turkey through the Farm Sanctuary group a one-time $20 adoption fee will garner a color photo of your turkey and a one-year subscription to Farm Sanctuary’s quarterly newsletter. The Adopt-A-Turkey website offers potential adopters the opportunity to view color photos of the birds. Each has a one-sentence bird blurb. For example, Abraham, we are told, is “Like our founding fathers, (in that he) believes in freedom and justice for all beings.”

Abraham apparently is in good company. “Even Ben Franklin wanted the national bird to be a turkey because he felt the turkey was more interesting than the bald eagle,” said Ritterbusch.

The site also offers vegetarian recipes and Turkey Stories, which includes an “Touched by a Turkey” article that explains how “turkeys remember your face and they will sit closer to you with each day you revisit.”

If you want to be more actively involved, you may even be able to take a live turkey home, just like actress Linda Blair, who is among the celebrities listed on the group’s website. However, the process includes a lengthy application. Questions include number of children, marital status, employer, household income and essay answers that decribe your experience with farm animals and where the birds would live. But don’t despair. If you are unable to take a turkey home, the $20 sponsorship fee pays for feed, care and medical expenses for your bird. Many of the birds on the farm are 5-years-old.

The project also has an educational component to inform the public about the typical inhumane practices of factory farms. “The turkeys are bred to be an unnatural white color, and their joints fail them because their skeletal structure cannot handle the weight [gained by forced feedings],” Ritterbusch said. In addition, she said, factory farm turkeys are typically placed into overcrowded warehouses where they can become agitated and injure each other, so often their beaks are cut off and toes removed while the animals are still alive. The slaughtering process is even more gruesome.

So now, Ritterbusch said, her group’s goal is to “make a vegetarian Thanksgiving a mainstream idea.”

For more information, visit adopt aturkey.org or farmsanctuary.org.

H. Alex Helmick lives in Chicago, and is considering having a vegetarian Thanksgiving this year.

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: