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Birth, Life, And Death of a Factory-Farmed Turkey

From FFAC Factory Farming Awareness Coalition
November 2022

In 1910, there were 870,000 farms raising 3.7 million turkeys, with an average of four birds per farm. In 2021, 2,500 farms in the United States produced over 216 million turkeys. All inside of an animal agriculture system that favors overproduction, profit, and efficiency over animal welfare and sustainability.

debeaked Turkey
Image credit: Gabriela Penela / We Animals Media

In the last hundred years, the scale of turkey production has been radically transformed. In 1910, there were 870,000 farms raising 3.7 million turkeys, with an average of four birds per farm. In 2021, 2,500 farms in the United States produced over 216 million turkeys. In today’s standards of turkey production, a family farm is considered relatively small even while raising around 50,000 birds over the course of the year. In 2020, the US turkey sector produced 5.74 billion pounds of ready-to-cook meat, amounting to $5.19 billion in revenue.

An estimated 99.8% of the turkey products available to American consumers come from factory farms. These commercial poultry facilities maintain standardized procedures to breed, raise, slaughter, and process their turkeys in order to promote efficiency, profitability, and biosecurity.

This article will describe these procedures and assess issues of animal welfare that arise during turkey production.

Learn more about:

  • In the Hatchery
  • Brooding Barn
  • Finishing Barn
  • Welfare Concerns
  • Transport
  • Slaughter and Processing
  • Breeding

....

Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.


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