Food Life

This Thanksgiving I will not eat dinner with the rest of America.

This is not to say I’m un-American: I say the Pledge of Allegiance, sometimes I wear Levi jeans and, every so often, I hum the national anthem — softly at first, but then louder and louder. But on Nov. 24, this Thanksgiving Day, I will not eat turkey.

The turkey is a wild bird native to United States forests; but what does that mean, exactly? In the past, a turkey was a large nesting bird, according to the National Wild Turkey Federation. Tomorrow, who knows?

Shakespeare once asked, “What is in a name?” This eternal question continues to echo through American kitchens at Thanksgiving: What is turkey? 

Our founding fathers served venison instead of turkey at the first Thanksgiving — it’s almost as if they knew the bird was better off in the woods.

In 1621, the turkey was native to the forests of North America. It was consciously absent from the dishes featured at the dinner table and, as much as we have gained from our ancestors, it seems we have lost this little piece of insight.

Today’s bird cannot fly. It cannot survive a mild winter, cannot run or jump or reproduce on its own. All birds are artificially inseminated.

Butterball, Foster Farms and Cargill are today’s major turkey producers. These farms consist of a series of geometrically arranged cages; this is a turkey’s first sight. Farms that do not have the capacity for artificial insemination have baby chicks delivered to them through the U.S. Postal Service.

Fifty percent of these chicks die in the mail; those that survive typically live 39 days. Their lives end after a truck ride to the slaughterhouse; about 15 percent of birds die en route. The rest die on arrival.

Life on the farm is a desk job. Animals are treated as products, and products are treated as revenue. It’s democratic to put a price on food, but how low can this price afford to be?

A study recently conducted by the Pew Commission shows that the global production and transport of farmed animals contributes more to climate change than the entire transportation sector.

Animal agriculture is responsible for 37 percent of anthropogenic methane, a gas offering 23 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. The UN’s current data qualifies also cites diet in this environmental concern. Omnivores contribute seven times the greenhouse gases that vegans do.   

Which brings us back to our original question: What’s a turkey? Rather, without turkey, what’s Thanksgiving?  On this day of thanks the refusal to eat turkey is as anti-American as burning a flag. But, I’m as American as they come: I wear the jeans, I hum the song and my hand goes to my heart during the Pledge.

From a cultural standpoint, I want to eat the turkey. From a national perspective, I should. But, with greater questions looming behind this shadowy dish, the ability to break bread on this issue creates more questions than it answers.

­— ntepper@indiana.edu