President Obama: Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to the White House.
Tomorrow is one of the best days of the year to be an American.
It’s a day to count our blessings, spend time with the ones we love, and enjoy some
good food and some great company.
But it’s also one of the worst days of the year to be a turkey.
They don’t have it so good.
The rare exception of course are the two birds who've joined me today.
Hi it's Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget.
Every year, the President of the United States pardons two turkeys from being slaughtered
for Thanksgiving.
But what most people don’t realize about this supposedly lighthearted tradition is
that the majority of pardoned turkeys die within a year of their pardon.
And this year, as in several times before, the two presidential turkeys will come from
my state—Iowa.
Two days ago I was at a turkey slaughterhouse in Iowa, where over 20,000 turkeys a day are killed.
They were terrified.
Sitting in the cold for hours upon hours.
Covered and feces and sores.
One with a growth the size of a basketball on her chest.
I stayed with them for hours and streamed footage live to the channel to share their
stories on the last day of their lives.
You can see those videos to be with them here. [See upper right corner]
The turkeys we eat are bred to grow very large very fast and are slaughtered at around 18-20
weeks of age.
Because they’re so unnaturally large, those with the good fortune of being pardoned die
from typically obesity-related complications.
And as for where they get to live out the brief remainder of their lives?
Destinations have ranged from Disneyland, to Mount Vernon, to this place, and now…here,
where the public gets to ogle them in their enclosures.
This extravagant production, run by the lobbyist organization the National Turkey Federation,
essentially serves as an extended governmental infomercial for the turkey industry.
The Federation’s annual turkey gifting began more or less in 1947 when angry farmers sent
crates of live hens to President Truman in protest of his failed “poutlryless Thursday”
attempt to reduce national meat and egg consumption.
But it doesn’t take a president to pardon a turkey.
And as you can see, it’s not much of a reprieve after all.
To show you how it’s really done, and shine some light on this dark holiday—founded
upon the massacre of an entire people, who still mourn the loss of their families while
others gather in celebration with their own.
I want to share with you a story of hope from Rowdy Girl Sanctuary in Texas.
The following video was created by the incredible film making team Chee Wei and Alana Tompson.
You’ll hear Rowy Girl Founder Renee mention FFA, which along with 4-H is pro-farming agricultural
youth program, teaching children how to raise, care for and show so-called “food” animals
before sending them to slaughter.
To hear more about other FFA and 4H survivors, see this video about the residents of
Rowdy Girl Sanctuary.
[Phone Rings]
Renee: Hi, Is this Lillie?
This is Renee King Sonnen with the Rowdy Girl Sanctuary.
I have a strange request.
Renee: Right now, we are going to rescue two
turkeys that would have been slaughtered through the FFA system.
We saw a flyer in a health food store a couple of days ago advertising these two turkeys
for sale for fifty dollars each.
We grabbed the flyer, took it off the wall, left and straight away called and talked to
the lady to see if she would pardon these two turkeys.
Renee: Hi
Lillie: Hey! How are you doing?
Renee: So good to meet you
Renee: In Texas and other parts of the country, FFA is a real valued, traditional and cultural
experience for our youth.
But of course folks who really, really love animals and choose not to participate in any
of the violence towards them at all.
We are just elated that she said 'Yes' to pardoning the last two that she has.
Renee: So they just got out of the FFA?
Lillie: Yeah! the Fair, the Brazoria County Fair
Renee: So you had how many?
Lillie: We had twenty.
Renee: Twenty!
Lillie: I have three kids so, we had nine in the show.
Renee: So had you have any that, when they were ready to take them all away…
I heard that they call it the trail of tears, you know, when they go and …
Lillie: don’t know..
Anna is getting to keep her rabbit...
Renee: really?!
Lillie: So, her rabbit that made eleventh out of eighty four she’s going to keep him
and he’s going to live here forever.
Renee: Awww! that’s so awesome!
Lillie: we can compromise when we can but these were bred for certain purpose and that’s what...
Renee: You got to and you get that—
Lillie: Yes I have to have that mentality.
Renee: Yeah! you have to have that mentality to do it. Exactly!
Lillie: Yeah, otherwise I just don’t...
Renee: You lose your mind Lillie: I wouldn’t do it!
I wouldn’t do it! I wouldn’t raise them if I—you know...
Renee: No!...
Renee: You are so awesome to be doing this with us Lillie: Yep
Renee: Can I give you another Hug?
[Heartwarming Music continues]
Renee: It was such an experience to see this woman open her heart and pardon those
two turkeys.
To see the other turkeys that were destined to be Thanksgiving dinner was really sad.
You know, we really wanted all of them
Tommy: You can’t save them all.
There’s probably 80 Million turkeys that are going to be harvested in the next
few weeks for Thanksgiving dinner this year.
Renee: These turkeys are so inquisitive.
And they have personalities, you know, they love life, they want to live!
Renee: Thanksgiving is a time when families all get together nieces, nephew, uncles.
Families call, they come from all over.
You may not see these family members but that one time a year, so it really is a celebration
of love.
[Uplifting Music]
Renee: This year, this Thanksgiving, these two Turkeys are going to be celebrated so
that instead of giving thanks for a turkey on our plate, we are going to thanks for these
turkeys and we are going to be giving them a Thanksgiving Dinner to remember!
Renee: So everyone is gonna want to know I'm sure what their names are gonna be
because right now they have no names.
And we have decided to give them names of the two folks behind the camera right now.
We have Alana with Black Ant Films.
So we are going to call one of them Alana So.. that’s one name. And then the other one,
we were going to call her Chee Wei— he’s the producer of De Claffer Music.
But we decided that instead of calling him Chee Wei, since that’s a masculine term,
we are going to call her Chi Chi.
So we got Chi Chi and Alana.
We want to welcome them to Rowdy Girl Sanctuary.
Please share this video this holiday season to show what true compassion looks like
and the truth about Thanksgiving.
See these videos here, which are also linked in the description, for more about Thanksgiving’s
dark history, what turkeys really experience, and to get involved with and support the work
of Rowdy Girl Sanctuary.
Subscribe and enable notifications for more vegan truth every week.
Now go live vegan, spare a turkey or two, and I’ll see you soon.
Please think about them.
Please think about them this...
"Thanksgiving," y'know?
Don't forget them.
Cause it might just seem like...
trucks full of identical birds, you know?
One's the same as the other?
But those are individuals.
For each one of them,...
this is their life— this is their only life.
This is their last day.
They're about to go inside and experience something that none of us can even fathom.
It's their life.