Making Sense Of Turkey Meat Labels

How much do you know about where your Christmas dinner comes from?

Three hundred million turkeys are killed in the US 

Each year, baby turkeys are hatched tightly together in incubators. They’ll never see their mothers, although they look for them desperately. After only a few weeks they are moved to large windowless sheds where they suffer horribly inhuman tortures, such as beatings, kickings from the workers, the systematic removal of their toes and beaks without painkillers and other methods that are too brutal to describe here, all of this before they are even five days old. They are drugged and genetically modified in order for them to grow as large as possible as quickly as possible and because of this artificial manipulation, turkeys’ legs often break beneath them. At 5 months old they are sent to the slaughterhouse. (At this point, they would be 6 years old in human age.)

When they arrive at the slaughterhouse, turkeys are hung upside down by their weak legs, which often break during the process. Then, to make them stay still, their heads are dunked into electrified water, before their throats are slit. Then they are dunked in boiling water to defeather them. Most turkeys aren’t stunned properly and are boiled to death.

The term “free range” is used to describe animals that “are allowed occasional access to the outside for a small percentage of their lives”. There are no other requirements such as the quality and size of the outdoor area or the killing methods. Contrary to popular belief, “free-range” facilities are no more than large sheds in which tens of thousands of turkeys are crammed together on disease-ridden floors, living in their own waste. Many turkeys die simply from the stress of living in such an environment. 

To be one hundred percent sure where your turkey comes from you can check the table that appears on this website and decide better next year.

You can choose to turn your sight away, but from this point on you can’t ever again say you didn’t know.