So what’s Thanksgiving without the turkey? I guess that vegans are missing out on the fun, or then again maybe not. And we’re not talking Tofurkey here. It turns out, you don’t need to get elected president to give at least one of these big birds a pardon.
The folks at Farm Sanctuary are giving you the opportunity to have turkey for Thanksgiving, except not as the main course. In fact, the birds are at dinner table as guests and need not be “dressed” for the occasion.
Since 1986, the non-profit has “encouraged people to save a turkey at Thanksgiving through sponsorships that help us rescue animals and provide care for them at our sanctuaries.”
Now if that sounds like a mouthful, it’s probably because it is. Instagram user rozephiliac says, “The rescued residents are treated to a grand feast of stuffed squash, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. After spending the day getting to know the turkeys and other rescued animals that live at the sanctuary, we were treated to a gourmet vegan Thanksgiving feast of our own! During dinner, guests enjoyed a lively speaker program with presentations from Farm Sanctuary staff and special guests. This fun, feel-good event is perfect for families, individuals, long-time vegans, and those simply interested in learning a little more about animals.”
If you feel the love for our fine feathered friends, you can adopt your own turkey. Act now, and don’t be a chicken!
I hate turkeyboard lazyness. If you want to go by the numbers, it’s not just the shorter word “vegans” who are missing out on the fun, it’s mostly vegetarians. If I wanted to go by the numbers, it’s probably meat eaters who are missing out too, with the current choice of dry-meat high-weight modern hybrids raised in conditions I wouldn’t wish on my stepmother. In a way, it looks much more valuable to me to support humanely farm-raised heritage breeds and their farmers, than to encourage industrial farming abuse by providing an outlet for the worst farms.
By all means, rescue the abused birds from these farms, but they should probably still be raised for human consumption as the breed was meant to. That “feel good” feeling works only for a few birds named Naomi or Julia, not really when you have hundreds of anonymous birds rescued from a single farm, multiplied by several farms each year. I’d rather invest my money in supporting decent farmers and prosecuting abusive ones, so that there are no birds to rescue in the first place.