Thanksgiving Billboard Serves Up Controversy

Keen to try some roasted puppy leg or a freshly carved puppy breast? A new billboard PETA is trying to place outside public schools across the country ahead of Thanksgiving should certainly give children and their parents not only the shivers but also some important food for thought:

 
Turkey: © iStockphoto.com/James Steidl • Dog: © iStockphoto.com/Eric Isselée

Turkeys are gentle, inquisitive animals who enjoy music and like to have their feathers stroked, but turkeys raised for food are kept in crowded, dark sheds where the ammonia from their accumulated waste burns their skin. At slaughterhouses, turkeys are slammed upside down into shackles and dragged through electrified water. Many birds have their throats slit while they’re still conscious and able to feel pain.

Stuffing kids (or anyone) with turkey is also bad for their health: In addition to artery-clogging fat and cholesterol, they also could be gobbling up arsenic, which is used to combat disease on filthy factory farms. Other dangers of eating turkey include contracting listeria, salmonella, or campylobacter bacteria, which cause millions of cases of food-borne illness each year.

Kids can learn more about how to “love animals, not eat them” at the PETA Kids or peta2 websites. Adults who want to quit cruelty cold turkey this Thanksgiving can check out Gardein’s delicious vegan holiday recipes and enter to win a free vegan Gardein Savory Stuffed Turk’y on our Living page.

Written by Heather Faraid Drennan