Beg Your Pardon! Take turkey off the Thanksgiving plate

Each November in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, hundreds of people gather at a local farm in the Finger Lakes to feast with turkeys, rather than on them. The annual celebration, now in its 30th year, is hosted at Farm Sanctuary, the country’s largest farm animal rescue and protection organization, based just outside of Watkins Glen.

The 175-acre oasis is home to 22 of the lucky cluckers that have been plucked from slaughter, and on Saturday, November 21, they’ll meet more than 300 of their human friends in a gathering that offers a unique opportunity to meet the bird most Americans only see on their plates. The event also functions as an open house (or open barn), where visitors meet the animal residents—from cows and pigs to goats, sheep and other furry and feathered friends.

“It is our way of celebrating the lives of our turkeys, especially at a time when so many of them are used as food,” Susie Coston, the Farm Sanctuary’s national shelter director, told me from a celebration in California.

Turkeys are at the center of many Thanksgiving meals, but at the sanctuary, they are the guests of honor and not the entrée. The afternoon culminates in a “feeding of the turkeys” ceremony, where the birds strut out of a barn and saddle up to low tables on the lawn with red tablecloths and seasonal centerpieces. A crowd of spectators surrounds the spread encouraging the birds to feast. They gobble stuffed squash, salad topped with cranberries, and pumpkin pie. After the guests of honor feast, the humans decamp to the Harbor Hotel in Watkins Glen and sit down to a cruelty-free Thanksgiving dinner.

“The holidays are times when families come together,” Gene Baur, the president of Farm Sanctuary, told me. “And Thanksgiving is a continuation of that tradition. But for people who see turkeys as friends rather than food, going to one of these events and seeing the body of a dead bird in the middle of the table is difficult. So we have created something different.” He added: “I really enjoy seeing living animals rather than dead ones on the dinner table.”

The mission of Farm Sanctuary is to protect animals from cruelty, to inspire change in the way society views and treats farm animals, and to promote compassionate vegan living. But one need not be vegan to think twice about thoughtlessly eating meat. The organization, with the support of partners who frequently include law enforcement and local branches of the SPCA, has saved more than 10,000 animals from abusive owners, or egregious businesses.

In addition to Watkins Glen, celebrations have occurred at the other sanctuaries in Orland in Northern California, as well as in San Francisco, and outside of Washington, D.C. in Ellicott City, Maryland. The organization projects that almost a thousand people will participate this year, celebrating the lives of the 60 turkeys that will live out their natural lives on the farm.

I first attended the joyful event in the Watkins Glen location five years ago, and I haven’t felt the same about the holiday, or about eating birds, ever since. More Americans are already moving towards a plant-based diet, and pushing land animals off, or to the side, of the plate. Yet we continue to consume over 46 million turkeys on Thanksgiving alone; a tradition that is increasingly out of step with most of our understanding of the way in which factory farmed animals are treated.

“We started in 1986, so it has been a long time,” Baur said. “But it is a very exciting time to be working in this area. There are more and more people thinking about our food choices, and recognizing the way we do eat is making us sick, and that this can be prevented by eating plants instead of animals.” Baur recently published “Living the Farm Sanctuary Life,” a guide he collaborated with Gene Stone, who authored the famous cookbook “Forks Over Knives.”

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, the author of “The 30 Day Vegan Challenge” and a speaker at this year’s celebration for the turkeys, underscored the opportunity to eat better. “I have never met someone who will say ‘I eat a ton of meat, dairy, and eggs.’ Everybody thinks that they don’t eat a lot, but the truth is that you don’t know how much you eat until you stop.” She encourages simply stopping for a month, during which time one can “actually mark the changes.”

“You begin to recognize food options at restaurants, and entirely new restaurants that you never went to before. As creatures of habit we go to the same restaurants again and again, and order the same things again and again. Even if you ‘cut-back’ [with ‘Meatless Mondays or ‘VB6’ (Vegan before 6 p.m.)], you just don’t make significant changes as much as when you stop all together.

Thanksgiving, according to Baur and Patrick-Goudreau, can be the ideal time to move turkey off your plate, because there are so many alternative options. They suggest stuffed acorn squash, for instance, as a candidate to take the place in the center of the table.

Farm Sanctuary isn’t the first organization to pitch a poultry-less holiday. The New Yorker’s Calvin Trillin, a famous foodie, was appalled by turkey, which he wrote “was basically something college dormitories use to punish students for hanging around on Sunday.” He advocated substituting Spaghetti Carbonara.

It has also been promoted as patriotic. In an effort to support the Marshall Plan, and to assist in the rehabilitation of Europeans ravaged by World War II, President Truman famously declared Tuesdays “meatless” and Thursdays “poultry-less.” Though the effort turned out to be short lived, on Thanksgiving Day in 1947 the White House had neither turkey nor pumpkin pie.

For the last 25 years, the U.S. president has “officially” “pardoned” a select bird or two in a publicity stunt for poultry producers. These turkeys have food-related names: Mac and Cheese, Popcorn and Caramel; at Farm Sanctuary, they are Christina, Jackie, Robin, Pamela, Pepper, or Turpentine, who I met several years ago and who has since passed peacefully.

The pardon “speaks to the conflict between our human desire to act with compassion, and the violence of a holiday tradition centered on a carcass of a bird lying in the center of the dinner table,” Baur has said.

Treating animals with humanity is no longer a fringe notion. As Pope Francis tweeted last summer, “It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly.” The “broad-breasted white” or “large white” industrially raised turkeys live confined to cages, packed in uncomfortable conditions, are designed to grow unnaturally large and quickly, and can reproduce only through artificial insemination.

With respect to consumption, your choice is your voice, and you are ethically what you eat. The meat industry slaughters nine-billion land animals annually – by now we are well aware of the fact that they are treated in ways that would be criminally prosecuted if they were abused like companion animals such as cats or dogs.

Finally, ditching the turkey also doesn’t really abandon tradition. As many know, it is far from clear that our colonial forebears even consumed the bird on Thanksgiving. Only venison has been confirmed with anything approaching veracity. More than 20 years ago, historian and author Jill Lepore called the “dubious menu” one of many things wrong with our “picture” of the holiday.

While this year’s event is sold out, you can still sponsor a lucky clucker for $30, with Farm Sanctuary ensuring to the bird’s care for its natural life (which can last as long as ten years). Donors receive a photo of the turkey, as well as an adoption certificate.

Even if you don’t adopt, you could still abstain. Before you fetch a frozen one for your family’s feast, why not consider leaving turkey off the Thanksgiving table. Your taste buds will surely thank you. And your conscience will, too.

If You Go

To join Farm Sanctuary’s Adopt a Turkey Project, donate $30 to sponsor rescued turkeys Christina, Jackie, Robin, Pamela or Pepper. The shelter is open May through October. For more information, visit www.farmsanctuary.org.

“Living the Farm Sanctuary Life,” by Gene Baur with Gene Stone. (Rodale Books, 2015)

“The 30-Day Vegan Challenge,” by Colleen Patrick-Goudreu. (New Edition Paperback Edition, Montali Press, 2015)