Tomorrow is Thanksgiving -- a holiday grounded in the principles of celebration and gratitude. Here's one holiday that does not smack of commercialism, and it is instead a time for families and friends to assemble around the dinner table, to talk, and to feast. In the broadest sense, so many of us do indeed have much to be grateful for, including the bounty of American agriculture, and tomorrow is a day to reflect on that good fortune.
It is also a holiday built around the consumption of turkeys. Sadly, the domesticated birds sold from factory farms look like a caricature of the wild birds from which they descend. Today's industrially produced birds have been selectively bred for enormous body mass and, as a consequence, many of them cannot stand or walk after only a few months of life. They have so much breast meat that they are even incapable of copulation -- reproduction now occurs only through artificial insemination. They are not healthy animals, and they suffer chronic pain. Some of them die from heart attacks -- suggesting that something is deeply wrong in their physical make-up when baby and juvenile animals perish from maladies we associate with old age.
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