Blog - Joyful Curmudgeon - Blog
A Mary T. Hoffman Commentary from All-Creatures.org

 

"Joyful Curmudgeon" An oxymoron?
No! I see all the beauty of God's creation and I'm joyful.  At the same time, I see all the suffering and corruption going on in the world, and feel called to help expose and end it so that we may have true peace and compassion.

 

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Turkeys – 25 January 2008
By Mary T. Hoffman

Have you noticed how the general public makes fun of turkeys – as well as chickens, pigs, and practically every other animal you can name? It seems as though the more animals are cruelly abused physically, the more they are used as targets for nasty remarks.

And turkeys, who in reality are excellent parents to their children (humans would do well to learn parenting skills from turkeys), are one of the most maligned, both physically and verbally, of God’s creatures. Yet on huge factory farms young turkeys are raised in incubators without any love or care from a mother. This is directly opposed to God’s intent.

Unfortunately, church leaders allow this horrible hell on earth to continue, and even encourage it. I’ll never forget how an evangelical, full gospel pastor was so demonically cruel in his killing of a turkey that a man, who was visiting in his home (and happened to be an “avid” hunter), was horrified! This hunter, whom we know personally, was so upset by what he witnessed the pastor doing, that he mentioned it to us. Perhaps that is why he, his wife, and their children left that church.

These are just a few of the mutilations and assorted atrocities suffered by turkeys:

While fully conscious, rear toes are sometimes cut off with scissors, or while hung upside down the tips of their front three toes are exposed to microwave radiation, cooking the toes so that their toes turn white and the tips eventually shrivel up and fall off.

Their snoods ripped off their heads.

Chicks also hung by their heads and the tips of their beaks exposed to high intensity infrared light, or beaks cut off with a red-hot knife.

Painful eye injuries.

Getting stuck in machinery.

Being tossed around by the workers.

On young turkeys, mutilations are performed as a way of curbing aggressive tendencies. Isn’t it ironic that humans take turkeys away from their natural state, make them aggressive, and then mutilate them to stop the aggression that they have caused to begin with?

Throwaway chicks are known in the industry as “hatch debris.” Farmed animals are considered commodities and not living and feeling beings with emotions and needs like ours. The industry only considers the economics of raising them for food: it is cheaper to allow pain, suffering and eventual death for a certain percentage of turkeys, than it is to provide proper medical care.

Male breeding turkeys never come in contact with a female turkey. Instead, they are masturbated three times a week by a human farm worker to collect their sperm which is used to artificially inseminate female turkeys in a process that is really rape. In our opinion, what humans do to these birds is an abomination before God, for in reality they are having a form of sexual relationship with the turkeys.

The way these turkeys are being treated is piling one evil upon another. Every person who eats a turkey’s flesh contributes to this unending nightmare. This is just one more reason why it makes sense to “Go Vegan.”

Please visit:
http://www.all-creatures.org/anex/turkey.html 

For great-tasting recipes, visit:
http://www.all-creatures.org/recipes.html

Go on to: Pancreatic Cancer – 26 January 2008
Return to: Glorifying Cruelty – 24 January 2008
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