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Does not fly. Does not go up. President Bush gives a reassuring caress to 'Marshmallow,' a turkey from Trites Farms in Henning, Minn., beneficiary of the Thanksgiving's traditional presidential pardon, at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex on Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005. ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO BY J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE
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A TALE OF TWO TURKEYS
Think last year's pardoned birds 'Marshmallow' and 'Yam' are on a free-range farm somewhere living the good life? Think again, says CHRISTA ALBRECHT-VEGAS
Of the 300 million turkeys bred for slaughter in the United States each year, 45 million are destined to become Thanksgiving centerpieces. Of those 45 million, one lucky bird and a runner-up will receive a presidential pardon in a ceremony at the White House and be granted the opportunity to live out the rest of their natural lives.
There has always been something oddly suspect about this whole farcical affair. Perhaps it is the certainty that afterwards, the president will retire with his family to devour one of the not-so-lucky 45 million birds. Maybe it is just the conspiracy theorist in me. In any event, at a recent gathering of like-minded vegetarians, a great deal of grim speculation arose over what actually becomes of the presidentially pardoned turkeys after they leave the White House. So I began tracking the origin and whereabouts of "Marshmallow" and the alternate bird, "Yam," dubbed "the people's turkeys" by President George W. Bush on Nov. 22, 2005.
Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has been invited by the White House to supply a turkey for the pardoning ceremony. Historically, the honor of choosing the bird has gone to the federation's chairman, an annually elected official. In 2005, Pete Rothfork, president and CEO of Melrose Feed Mill, Inc. in Melrose, Minn., received that honor. From a flock of 20,000 birds at an industrial facility, or "factory farm," as some might call them, 24 poults were pulled at nine weeks of age and moved to an isolated environment to be hand-raised by Jim Trites, a federation veterinarian and friend of Rothfork's. The birds were conditioned from that young age to endure bright lights, lots of human handling, and were even trained to stand on a table, all in preparation for their 15 minutes of fame at the White House.
Having studied press photographs of the event, and noticing that neither of the birds appeared to have been de-toed or de-beaked, I surmised that Marshmallow and Yam had been pardoned from more than just the butcher's blade. I asked Sherrie Rosenblatt, spokeswoman for the National Turkey Federation if this exception to industry rule had been made for the sake of good public relations. "Honestly, I just don't know," she replied.
But Reannon Peterson, spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was happy to share her thoughts.
"Since these birds are hand-selected to be public figures, they are spared the routine, painful mutilations endured by more than 300 million other turkeys annually. The industry would not want the diseased and often crippled birds that you find on factory farms to be paraded in front of the American public," Peterson said.
In previous years, the birds have retired to Kidwell Farm at Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Va., a destination name that ought to put the fear of God in any turkey's pumped-up breast. But in 2005, Disneyland Resort and Theme Park approached the federation, offering permanent placement for the birds upon their pardoning. From D.C., the turkeys were flown to Anaheim, Calif., where they served as grand marshals of Disneyland's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Afterwards, they were moved to a custom-built exhibit at Santa's Reindeer Roundup in Disneyland's Frontierland attraction, to be ogled and perhaps salivated over by multitudes of spectators each day of the rest of their lives.
I contacted Bob Tucker, media spokesman for Disneyland, to inquire how the birds were faring in their retirement, and was dismayed to learn that neither bird had lived to see another Thanksgiving. Yam passed away last February; Marshmallow in August.
It may surprise many to know that the broad-breasted White Turkey, a hybrid specimen most people know as a headless, featherless mound of shrink-wrap in the grocery store, has a natural life expectancy of 12 to 18 months, whereas its wild counterparts can live 12 to 15 years.
"It's fairly typical of these birds. They weren't expected to live that long," Tucker said, quickly adding that the birds were seen and enjoyed by thousands of people every day of their brief lives.
Perhaps the pressure of daily public appearances contributed to the birds' early deaths. But the fact is that these birds produced to slake the salivating public's hearty appetite for white turkey meat have been genetically engineered to grow at a rate and to a size their bodies cannot tolerate.
"These turkeys grow so quickly that if a seven pound human baby grew at the same rate, the infant would weigh 1,500 pounds at just 18 weeks of age," Peterson said.
"They are intensively bred and drugged to grow so large, so quickly, that their legs often break under their unnatural bulk. Many suffer from heart attacks and crippling leg pain that makes it hard to stand or walk normally."
Marshmallow and Yam may have managed to keep their toes and beaks and elude the butcher's blade, but in the end, they could not escape their fates as the products of agribusiness. They died in the way that presidentially pardoned turkeys have historically died.
"The entire 'pardoning' charade is especially disheartening when you learn that most of the pardoned turkeys die within six months and all have died within a year. One of the turkeys pardoned in 2000 died a day later," Peterson comments.
For the record, the 22 remaining candidates for pardon in 2005 were slaughtered in a small processing plant in Melrose, Minn., to become, as Rosenblatt says "... part of what every other turkey raised for Thanksgiving dinner becomes."
Many Americans have begun to rethink their notions of what comes 'naturally' to their dinner tables. This ought to bring some comfort to animal rights activists come Thanksgiving morning. And yet, there is something beyond the grim irony in the life and death of a pardoned turkey that troubles me. In an effort to get to the source of dissonance which the pardoning ceremony evokes, I turn to the American Heritage Dictionary, which defines the word "pardon" as, "exemption from the penalties of an offense or crime."
Herein lies the crux of the matter, for what crime have these birds, or the 45 million others slaughtered for Thanksgiving committed? They have never been granted the space or freedom to live natural lives, much less misbehave. Perhaps our consumer culture, which would rather turn a blind eye to the origins of its meat than take responsibility for the suffering that it entails, ought to be seeking pardon. As for the two turkeys from Lynn Nutt's farm in Monett, Mo., who are to receive their pardon Wednesday, Nov. 22, perhaps a less public sanctuary where the birds could face their stunted futures in privacy and dignity is in order.
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