Thanksgiving turkey torture

Today, millions of Americans gather to give thanks. But the turkeys they will feast on have nothing to be thankful for

Sarah Palin, Alaska's governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate, raised a few eyebrows recently when she pardoned a turkey for Thanksgiving – and then proceeded to give a television interview while other turkeys were being slaughtered in the background. Today, millions of Americans will gather around dead turkeys to give thanks for the blessings in their lives. The turkeys, of course, have nothing to be thankful for.

Before they're slaughtered, these smart, social birds, who enjoy having their feathers stroked and gobbling along to music, spend five to six months packed together so tightly in dark sheds that flapping a wing or stretching a leg is nearly impossible.

To keep the frustrated, cramped birds from pecking and clawing at one another, factory workers cut off parts of the birds' toes and a portion of their upper beaks. These procedures are known to cause chronic and acute pain. The males' snoods, the fleshy appendage under their chin, are also chopped off – without any pain relief.

Miserable and suffering, the birds must stand mired in their own waste, breathing strong ammonia fumes which burn their eyes and lungs. Some birds develop congestive heart disease, enlarged livers and other illnesses. Millions of turkeys succumb to "starve-out", a stress-induced condition that causes young birds to stop eating.

To keep more birds alive under the dismal, disease-ridden conditions – and to stimulate their growth – farmers dose them with antibiotics. Because the birds are drugged and bred to grow so large in such a short period of time, their bones can't support their weight, and many suffer from broken legs. Some birds attempt to drag themselves by their wings to reach food and water.

Turkeys are vulnerable to all kinds of gratuitous cruelty. Just recently, a Peta US investigator went undercover at Aviagen Turkeys in West Virginia and documented that workers were stomping on turkeys, punching them, beating them with pipes and boards and twisting the birds' necks repeatedly. One worker even bragged about shoving a broomstick down a turkey's throat because the bird had pecked at him. When the investigator told a supervisor about the cruelty he witnessed, the supervisor responded, "Every once in a while, everybody gets agitated and has to kill a bird".

Aviagen Turkeys is the self-proclaimed "world's leading poultry breeding company". It has two offices in the UK, and its facilities across Europe produce turkeys under the brand British United Turkeys. The hideous abuse documented at Aviagen Turkeys in the US is the norm at factory farms around the globe. Several years ago, for example, Peta caught workers at Bernard Matthews, Europe's biggest turkey-killer, kicking birds and throwing them up in the air and using pipes as baseball bats to hit them.

In slaughterhouses, terrified turkeys are hung upside-down and their heads are dragged through an electrified "stunning tank", which immobilises the birds but does not kill them. Many turkeys dodge the tank and are still conscious when their throats are cut. If the knife or the back-up killer expected to be on duty fails to cut the birds' throats properly, the animals are scalded to death in the tanks of boiling water used for feather removal.

Anyone who eats turkey contributes to this horrific cruelty, often in the name of celebration. Of the nearly 35 million turkeys killed for food every year in the UK, more than 10 million are slaughtered to be eaten for Christmas.

Causing pain and suffering hardly seems like the holiday spirit. Let's all give birds a break by choosing tasty vegetarian alternatives to turkey at the holidays and all year round.