Guilt-free feast

To the editor:

Thanksgiving is about liberty, happiness, and life. But the 330 million turkeys raised each year for the holiday dinner table experience none of these. They are crammed into large sheds filled with toxic fumes from their excrement. Their beaks and toes are sheared off with a hot blade to reduce damage from stress-induced aggression. After 16 weeks, they are decapitated by an electric saw or electrocuted while fully conscious. Millions of turkeys don’t even make it past the first week, sometimes drowning in water dishes or starving to death when eating with their mutilated beaks is too painful.

Thanksgiving is about good health, but the USDA estimates that salmonella is present in 35 percent of turkeys. Turkey is also completely devoid of fiber and carbohydrates and loaded with even more fat and cholesterol than many cuts of beef.

Thanksgiving is about sharing, but feeding grain to turkeys denies lifesaving foodstuffs to millions of starving people. Thanksgiving is about a bountiful harvest, but raising grain for turkeys depletes topsoil and groundwater that are essential to good growing conditions.

On this special occasion, let us reflect on the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Let us replace the carcass of an innocent animal on our holiday dinner table with a delicious, guilt-free spread from our bountiful harvest of grains, vegetables and fruits. Let us enjoy our families and loved ones over happiness and life instead of misery and death.

Megan Fobes,

Lawrence