Little Girl’s Jaw-Dropping Prayer Gives Canadians Food for Thought

PETA’s provocative TV commercial featuring a little girl who says grace before her family’s Thanksgiving dinner—and turns her prayer into a graphic description of the ways in which turkeys suffer in the meat industry—is airing just in time for Canadian Thanksgiving on CBOT in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, which is located in Ontario, Canada’s top turkey-producing province.

“Dear God, thank you for the turkey we’re about to eat and for the turkey farms, where they pack them into dark, tiny little sheds for their whole lives,” the girl begins. Eliciting gasps and raised eyebrows among her relatives, she continues, “And special thanks for all the chemicals and dirt and poop that’s in the turkey we’re about to eat.” The ad concludes, “This Thanksgiving, be thankful you’re not a turkey. Go vegan.”

Young people have a natural empathy for our feathered friends and for all animals, and they deserve to learn that birds raised for Thanksgiving dinner have nothing to be thankful for. That’s why PETA is calling on caring families to make their holiday table a place of compassion—by choosing delicious vegan food.

Last year, Canadians ate 8.4 million turkeys—and 2.9 million were purchased for Thanksgiving alone. In nature, turkeys are protective and loving parents as well as spirited explorers who can climb trees and run up to 40 kilometres per hour. Turkeys in the wild can live to be 10 years old, but those raised for food are normally slaughtered when they’re still just babies, between 12 and 26 weeks old. The young birds are hung up by the feet from metal shackles, and their heads are dragged through an electrified bath to stun them, but it doesn’t always work: Often, they’re still conscious when their throats are slit and they’re dumped into scalding-hot water for feather removal.

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