Free From Harm
November 2014
[NOTE from All-Creatures.org: Read Inside a Turkey Factory and watch Turkeys - Extracting Semen To impregnate female turkeys, factory farm workers restrain and masturbate male turkeys to "collect" their semen AND Turkeys - Injecting Semen -After "collecting" semen from male turkeys, female turkeys are restrained while semen is rammed into their vaginas with a tube or syringe.]
If forcibly masturbating males to collect their semen and violently inserting that semen into the restrained hen’s vagina against her will is not rape and bestiality, then what is it? How can sexually assaulting other humans be immoral but not sexually assaulting nonhumans who also suffer emotionally and physically — a fact that the “milkers” themselves readily admit to?
Image from United
Poultry Concerns (UPC)
Some people strongly object to the use of the word “rape” to refer to the systematic sexual violation and forced impregnation of farmed animals to artificially breed them by the billions for meat and dairy products. According to this logic, the word is only appropriate when referring to human victims, as if to suggest that other animals can’t be sexually victimized and don’t deserve the exclusive status of victimhood reserved for humans. What words could soften the blow? Is it somehow more accurate to say “forced reproduction,” or to use the innocuous industry euphemism, “artificial insemination?” What gets conveniently lost in these sanitized terms is the violent domination of bodies and reproductive systems at the heart of animal farming.
Domestic turkeys have been bred to be so large, they cannot mate naturally, so hens are forcibly “inseminated” several times. Males are masturbated to get their semen. A worker at a turkey breeding facility in Missouri describes his job: “I have never done such hard, dirty, disgusting work in my life: 10 hours of pushing birds, grabbing birds, wrestling birds, jerking them upside down, pushing open their vents, dodging their panic-blown excrement and breathing the dust stirred up by terrified birds.” (Visit TURKEYS page on United Poultry Concerns (UPC).)
On the question of masturbation and insemination, a UK turkey farmer named Paul Kelly told The Independent: “It’s been happening for 80 years.” “The turkey was already upside down in Paul’s hands. He swiftly uncovered a hole amidst the feathers, gave it a couple of tweaks, and there was the turkey semen, looking like a bit of crumbly old toothpaste. ‘We take this,’ said Paul, ‘and suck it into a rubber tube. It’s then blown into the vagina.’ He picked up a nearby turkey hen, and revealed the vagina. When he put the bird down, she fluttered her feathers and walked off. Kelly: ‘What she’s doing with her feathers – that’s called rattling. It proves she likes being handled.’” (Read Andrew Martin's "The Turkey Fights Back.")
If forcibly masturbating males to collect their semen and violently inserting that semen into the restrained hen’s vagina against her will is not rape and bestiality, then what is it? How can sexually assaulting other humans be immoral but not sexually assaulting nonhumans who also suffer emotionally and physically — a fact that the “milkers” themselves readily admit to?
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12 Reasons You May Never Want to Eat Turkey Again.
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