A traditional Thanksgiving

There is a lot of rhetoric this time of year from certain animal rights organizations that turkeys are mistreated at Thanksgiving. I worked on a small commercial farm for years, so I think this type of argument is the equivalent of spitting in the faces of me and everyone else I knew who worked to keep the supermarket shelves full. I'm not going to attack this rhetoric outright, but I am going to discuss why, if you go for a vegetarian or organic Thanksgiving, you should know a few things.\n Many people join the "battle" for animal rights because they cannot separate a livestock animal from a pet. The logic goes something like this: "I love my dog and wouldn't eat him. My dog's an animal. Hey, a cow's an animal, too. I shouldn't eat cows." \nI find this an interesting chain of thought. I like dogs, too. I just know what that dog thinks of me. He might like me because I feed him and pet him, but he doesn't love me. I know that when a dog licks me that he's not doing it because he loves me, but because of the salty taste of my skin. In other words, he thinks I taste pretty good. He doesn't lick other dogs because their fur isn't as tasty as my skin. He doesn't lick anything he doesn't want to eat. In fact, pets cause one of the main problems crime scene investigators have when looking at deaths in the home. You see, when the owner dies, dogs or cats in the house develop a tendency to nibble on him or her.\nAny human traits you think your pet has are put there by you, and any human traits that are put on livestock animals are put there by you as well. \nI would like to caution anyone looking to serve organic vegetables at their Thanksgiving festivities. For some reason many more organic vegetables are sold than are grown. Isn't that funny? This oddity in mathematics was investigated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They bought 55 common food items at a regular supermarket and at an organic supermarket. What they found was that the word "organic" really just means expensive. "Organic" foods cost much more; $55.42 was spent at the natural store and $33.31 at the supermarket on the same foods. \nYou know what else is funny about these organically grown foods? They often contain more pesticides than supermarket items. The U.S. Department of Agriculture did another study on 55 common produce items from "organic" stores and supermarkets. Thirty percent of the "organic" foods contained pesticide residue while only 20 percent of the commercially grown foods had residue. This happens because pesticide residue resides in the soil, and they get on the vegetables whether the growers use pesticides or not. The commercial growers, or your average American farmer, take precautions to keep that pesticide residue from getting on your dinner plate. The organic farmers, because they do not directly apply pesticides, don't. \nBut believe me, you don't want organic vegetables anyway. Without those pesticides to keep bugs off and without agricultural technology that stimulates growth, that vegetable is more likely to be small, withered and eaten up by bugs, not to mention that it's more likely to contain pesticides. So you're getting the pesticides and a lower quality of food. If you see a big, crisp vegetable with the label "organic" on it, you can be assured the label is the only thing organic about it.\nThe animal rights movements are a con and a sham that are based on nothing more than emotion. Animals are animals. They aren't people and never will be. Supposedly organically grown foods are nothing more than an elaborate scheme to separate wannabe hippies from their money. So enjoy your turkey and shut up.