Beware the Broad-Breasted White Turkey!!

[BurtWorm]

No jokes, please. The graphic below indicates what's in an editorial in today's NY Times describing the inhumanity of America's turkey breeding factories. They clip the bird's beak to hamper its native finickiness. Unable to pick at its food, it's beak becomes an indiscriminate shovel, and it becomes a big, fat, tasteless mass product in very short order. Kept awake for as close to 24 hours as possible, it becomes nothing more than an eating machine:






http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/24/opinion/24MART.html

[eyesroll]

1. At least my dad buys free range/organic turkeys...

They're still selectively-bred monstrosities, but at least they're raised more humanely (in theory, anyway).

I think if I was hosting Thanksgiving, I'd get an heirloom turkey. They're not much to look at (by modern American standards, anyway), but they're supposed to be closer to what the original turkeys tasted like.

[BurtWorm]

2. The key to safe turkey is "traceability"

according to this piece. Does the person who sold you the bird know where it came from...can he or she name the farm or farmer? Corporations are not above lying about their product's being "organic," "all-natural" or "free-range."

[eyesroll]

4. Last year, my dad bought direct from the farm

I don't know what he's doing this year. (He always gets one labeled "free range/organic," though). Hopefully the same.

[truthspeaker]

3. I'm buying free-range again this year

More humane AND tastes a lot better. Win-win. Costs almost twice as much but I'm pretty sure the farmer sees a good chunk of that price difference, not a huge agri-biz, so I don't mind.