The Thanksgiving holiday serves to focus our attention on man's relationship with nature. In a celebration of the fall harvest, we express our appreciation for the bounty we have received.
In American tradition, the Pilgrims' survival in the New World was enabled by the Native Americans, with whom they joined in a great feast of thanks. Every year Americans set aside a day to hold their own feast of Thanksgiving which features traditional foods that are native to the Americas, such as, turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, corn, turnips, and pumpkin pie.
Our celebration of Thanksgiving is the perfect opportunity to reinforce our connection, not only with the earth which still provides us with such a bounty but also the members of our community who have made raising these foods their life's work. While opening a can of yams, defrosting a frozen industrial turkey and buying a boxed pumpkin pie may have meaning in continuing some parts of the Thanksgiving tradition, I suggest we celebrate our relationship with the present as well as the past by making an extra effort to eat as many of these traditional foods from local, humanely raised sources as possible. Here in the Northeast that is pretty easy for most of the meal, but what about the turkey?
Finding a fresh, naturally raised turkey will take a little extra effort. These birds are not yet so easy to come by, but what a difference it will make to our celebration.
What could be unnatural about the supermarket turkey we bought last year? For a frank (not for the faint-of-heart) online look at turkey breeding procedures, go here. If you want to learn more than you'll probably ever need to know about natural turkey life and behavior, including intimate details about turkey sex, read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I suggest you read it even if you aren't motivated by that last statement -- it's a great book, and the turkey sex is only one small part (no pun intended).
If you have a resource for non-industrial turkeys, please share it here in the comments section.
And let's not forget that generosity is also a hallmark of the American Thanksgiving tradition. Just as the native Americans unselfishly helped their new immigrant neighbors survive the winter, I will be contributing to local efforts to feed those who are in need by working with my local food rescue organization, Island Harvest.
A tasting of four meatless “turkeys” for the holiday table
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Comments
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wayneluke Posted 10:37 am
24 Sep 2007
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Gar Lipow Posted 10:51 am
24 Sep 2007
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Gar Lipow Posted 10:56 am
24 Sep 2007
Anya: I love a ritual sacrifice.
Buffy: Not really a one of those.
Anya: To commemorate a past event you kill and eat an animal. A ritual sacrifice... with pie
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PermieWriter Posted 3:14 pm
24 Sep 2007
I halve pumpkins, scoop out the seeds, lightly oil and salt them and roast them at 400 degrees on the rack until they're soft. Remove them just before the shell splits, dripping pumpkin juice all over the inside of the oven, filling the house with a horrendous, day-after-Halloween-ish smell. Cool and mash up the pumpkin and use just like the canned stuff.
It's not hard and makes a huge difference in the pie. I use locally grown, organic sugar pie pumpkins, of course. It's also ridiculously easy to make your own cranberry sauce, but folks seem wholly addicted to the canned stuff.
Eat what you grow, grow what you eat
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caniscandida Posted 3:35 pm
24 Sep 2007
The video at the website meat.org, "Meet Your Meat," has been mentioned now a few times, a couple of times by me, in the recent PETA threads. The first section of it, on Chicken and Turkeys, shows some turkeys being tormented.
The link "Vegetarian 101" takes you to this other PETA site:
http://goveg.com/vegetarian101.asp
There is good information on the treatment of the most common animals raised in the food industry, including turkeys.
This Thanksgiving, I am going to try as forcefully as I dare to get my parents to go with tofurkey.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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Carl Flatow Posted 3:56 pm
24 Sep 2007
The point of the blog was to encourage folks who now eat industrial food, including meat, to switch to meat from animals raised locally, the old-fashioned way -- humanely, on a diet that is historically natural for that animal. I would think that others who reject the eating of meat might consider that at least a step in the right direction.
On the other hand, I would be interested to know if there are many folks moving from meatless diets toward diets with some meat from animals raised the old-fashioned way, as I am.
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More blogs at http://sciencefriday.com
These comments represent the opinions of Carl Flatow.
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David Roberts Posted 4:02 pm
24 Sep 2007
grist.org
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amc89 Posted 12:29 am
25 Sep 2007
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:27 am
25 Sep 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Mary Posted 3:40 am
25 Sep 2007
Rather than Barbara Kingsolver's book, for a more empathic consideration of turkeys (i.e., written by someone not bent on killing and eating them), see:
http://www.upc-online.org/more_than_a_meal.html
For a quicker read, see:
http://www.upc-online.org/winter06/whoarethey.html
And regarding the mindless custom of eating turkey at Thanksgiving, see:
http://www.upc-online.org/turkeys/60105bowlinggreen.htm
These are all written by Dr. Karen Davis, who has lived with turkeys as companion animals and knows them as the interesting, inquisitive, sentient individuals they are.
It's high time for new tradition that celebrates life rather than causes misery, pain and death.
Respect Life - including your own: Go Vegan.
http://www.TryVeg.com
Mary
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Biodiversivist Posted 7:32 am
25 Sep 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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spaceshaper Posted 9:36 am
25 Sep 2007
Implies that the gorge rises at the mere concept of comparing deliberately inflicted human and animal suffering. I find this, frankly, odd. I'd always imagined your nom-de-plume implied a more inclusive ethic. Care to elaborate?
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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Biodiversivist Posted 10:13 am
25 Sep 2007
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/9/13/125151/338
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/1/13/202149/375
It makes my skin crawl when someone puts animal suffering on the same plane as human suffering (genital mutilation and slavery), can't help it. It's a visceral reaction. Nothing on this planet can suffer like a human being can suffer. Our level of sentience is a double-edged sword. We can see and fear the future.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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caniscandida Posted 11:17 am
25 Sep 2007
Still, BioD has at least this much of a point, that human suffering includes the dimension of thought about the long future. And he might have added, human suffering is aggravated by consideration of the suffering of others. That is probably true to a great extent, though, with social animals of the highest sensitivity, such as many primates, cetaceans, elephants and wolves. And other animals too will grieve for the loss of a mate, a parent, a child.
On the other hand, one wishes he might have balanced against that the special character of animal suffering: their vulnerability and utter helplessness in the hands of human beings.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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spaceshaper Posted 1:31 pm
25 Sep 2007
Disgust is a strong and undeniable emotion. Disgust at the appalling circumstances of much of what passes for animal husbandry in this culture is of course what drives many of us to a non-carnivorous diet.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:48 pm
25 Sep 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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caniscandida Posted 3:28 pm
25 Sep 2007
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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