{"id":15944,"date":"2025-01-01T18:15:55","date_gmt":"2025-01-01T18:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=15944"},"modified":"2025-01-01T18:15:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T18:15:56","slug":"8-million-turkeys-will-be-thrown-in-the-trash-this-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=15944","title":{"rendered":"8 million turkeys will be thrown in the trash this Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“We will collectively eat more than 40 million turkeys<\/a> \u2014 factory farmed<\/a> and heavily engineered animals that bear scant resemblance to the wild birds that have been apocryphally written into<\/a> the Thanksgiving story. (The first Thanksgiving probably didn\u2019t have turkey.) And we will do it all even though turkey meat is widely considered flavorless and unpalatable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is, almost without fail, a dried-out, depressing hunk of sun-baked papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 \u2014 a jaw-tiringly chewy, unsatisfying, and depressingly bland workout,\u201d journalist Brian McManus wrote for Vice<\/a>. \u201cDeep down, we know this, but bury it beneath happy memories of Thanksgivings past.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what is essentially the national holiday of meat-eating revolves around an animal dish that no one really likes. That fact clashes with the widely accepted answer to the central question of why it\u2019s so hard to convince everyone to ditch meat<\/a>, or even to eat less of it: the taste, stupid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Undoubtedly, that has something to do with it. But I think the real answer is a lot more complicated, and the tasteless Thanksgiving turkey explains why.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Hundreds of years ago, a turkey on Thanksgiving might have represented abundance and good tidings \u2014 a too-rare thing in those days, and therefore something to be grateful for. Today, it\u2019s hard to see it as anything but a symbol of our profligacy and unrestrained cruelty against nonhuman animals. On a day meant to embody the best of humanity, and a vision for a more perfect world, surely we can come up with better symbols.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides, we don\u2019t even like turkey.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In the wild, turkeys live in \u201csmallish groups of a dozen or so, and they know each other, they relate to each other as individuals,\u201d Singer, author of the new book Consider the Turkey<\/em><\/a>, said on a recent episode of the Simple Heart<\/em><\/a> podcast. \u201cThe turkeys sold on Thanksgiving never see their mothers, they never go and forage for food\u2026 They\u2019re pretty traumatized, I\u2019d say, by having thousands of strange birds around who they can\u2019t get to know as individuals,\u201d packed together in crowded sheds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From birth to death, the life of a factory-farmed turkey is one punctuated by rote violence, including mutilations to their beaks, their toes, and snoods<\/a>, a grueling trip to the slaughterhouse, and a killing process where they\u2019re roughly grabbed and prodded, shackled upside down, and sent down a fast-moving conveyor belt of killing. \u201cIf they\u2019re lucky, they get stunned and then the knife cuts their throat,\u201d Singer said. \u201cIf they\u2019re not so lucky, they miss the stunner and the knife cuts their throat while they\u2019re fully conscious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thanksgiving, Americans throw the equivalent of about 8 million of these turkeys in the trash<\/a>, according to an estimate by ReFED<\/a>, a nonprofit that works to reduce food waste. And this year will be the third Thanksgiving in a row celebrated amid an out-of-control bird flu outbreak<\/a>, in which tens of millions of chickens and turkeys on infected farms have been culled using stomach-churning extermination methods<\/a>.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/388106\/thanksgiving-turkey-food-waste-sides-dry-bland<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“We will collectively eat more than 40 million turkeys \u2014 factory farmed and heavily engineered animals that bear scant resemblance to the wild birds that have been apocryphally written into the Thanksgiving story. (The first Thanksgiving probably didn\u2019t have turkey.) And we will do it all even though turkey meat is widely considered flavorless and unpalatable.
\n\u201cIt is, almost without fail, a dried-out, depressing hunk of sun-baked papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 \u2014 a jaw-tiringly chewy, unsatisfying, and depressingly bland workout,\u201d journalist Brian McManus wrote for Vice. \u201cDeep down, we know this, but bury it beneath happy memories of Thanksgivings past.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what is essentially the national holiday of meat-eating revolves around an animal dish that no one really likes. That fact clashes with the widely accepted answer to the central question of why it\u2019s so hard to convince everyone to ditch meat, or even to eat less of it: the taste, stupid.<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, that has something to do with it. But I think the real answer is a lot more complicated, and the tasteless Thanksgiving turkey explains why.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Hundreds of years ago, a turkey on Thanksgiving might have represented abundance and good tidings \u2014 a too-rare thing in those days, and therefore something to be grateful for. Today, it\u2019s hard to see it as anything but a symbol of our profligacy and unrestrained cruelty against nonhuman animals. On a day meant to embody the best of humanity, and a vision for a more perfect world, surely we can come up with better symbols.<\/p>\n

Besides, we don\u2019t even like turkey.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“In the wild, turkeys live in \u201csmallish groups of a dozen or so, and they know each other, they relate to each other as individuals,\u201d Singer, author of the new book Consider the Turkey, said on a recent episode of the Simple Heart podcast. \u201cThe turkeys sold on Thanksgiving never see their mothers, they never go and forage for food\u2026 They\u2019re pretty traumatized, I\u2019d say, by having thousands of strange birds around who they can\u2019t get to know as individuals,\u201d packed together in crowded sheds.<\/p>\n

From birth to death, the life of a factory-farmed turkey is one punctuated by rote violence, including mutilations to their beaks, their toes, and snoods, a grueling trip to the slaughterhouse, and a killing process where they\u2019re roughly grabbed and prodded, shackled upside down, and sent down a fast-moving conveyor belt of killing. \u201cIf they\u2019re lucky, they get stunned and then the knife cuts their throat,\u201d Singer said. \u201cIf they\u2019re not so lucky, they miss the stunner and the knife cuts their throat while they\u2019re fully conscious.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thanksgiving, Americans throw the equivalent of about 8 million of these turkeys in the trash, according to an estimate by ReFED, a nonprofit that works to reduce food waste. And this year will be the third Thanksgiving in a row celebrated amid an out-of-control bird flu outbreak, in which tens of millions of chickens and turkeys on infected farms have been culled using stomach-churning extermination methods.” <\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/388106\/thanksgiving-turkey-food-waste-sides-dry-bland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[725],"class_list":["post-15944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15945,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15944\/revisions\/15945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}