I saw the most recent video taken in one of the many nondescript places where they slaughter turkeys. I saw it about a week ago but I am still having nightmares about it. How do you stomp, repeatedly, on the head of a defenseless animal, over and over again, turn away while it desperately tries to right it self, how do you insert a rod into the anus of an animal in your care and rupture its bowel...and then go home at night, cuddle your kids, pet your dog and sleep peacefully? 

How do people get so desensitized? 

I would think that you are around all this noise, this terribly stifling ammonia saturated, unventilated building with wards that flap and run and squawk and resist, I would think that if you do this for any length of time, it wears you down to the point that you don't care anymore. You not only don't care. 

You hate. 

You hate where you are. 

You hate how little money you make. 

You hate how you smell. 

You hate how you feel. 

And the only ones that you can take all this hostility and aggression out on are the ones dependent on your grace. 

But who has shown you grace? 

Who has cared about your family, your living situation, your troubles? 

Who is empathetic about the despondency that overtakes you every morning when you awaken to the fact that you have to go back and work in a foul smelling, desperate environment for minimum wage, no benefits and horrific conditions? 

You work sick, you work injured, you work regardless of personal need. 

I can only imagine the desperation. 

But even though I feel such deep sorrow for the plight of the factory farm worker, I cannot begin to understand how one can inflict such terrible abuse on defenseless beings. 

How does it change you? 

Does it tag along behind you, like a shadow, this deep darkness? 

Does it taint everything you think and feel? 

Does it make you strike out at those children that refuse to listen? 

Does it make you slap down the significant other that will not get off your back? 

Does it propel you to kick at that mewing kitty or barking dog? 

How do you dislodge the tentacles of this persistent octopus? 

How do you free yourself, separate work that you do for forty, fifty, sixty, up to seventy hours a week from your personal time? 

How does it not become a part of you?

This is where the fact that all things are connected comes into play. That guy that picks up that turkey and repeatedly slams it against a wall, drops it and kicks it across the room....while it hangs on to life, cannot possibly let go of that sort of violence, that sort of raging demon that would allow him to see a defenseless animal as a legitimate target for his anger. It is there, lurking, waiting for a break in patience, a time out in tolerance, a sliver in the sleep cycle. It is waiting to come roaring back because it cannot go. It has no place to go. Those that experience this sort of soul changing conditions do not have the means to lift themselves and their families to a better place, to work through it in therapy, to power it out at the gym. Those that are remanded to this sort of labor are stuck. And there is nothing in this world more defeating than being stuck. 

We have to get to a place, as a society, of balance. Where we raise animals, if we cannot break the addiction, in a natural environment, with compassion and kindness, with gratitude for the sacrifice the animal is making for us. And when the supply is depleted, it is done. No more mass production, hormones and antibiotics. No more warehousing of sensitive souls in deplorable conditions. Respecting what has been given to us, much as we should be respecting the seas and the lands and the air that exists for us. We have progressed. We have evolved to a point that we should be doing so much better for those dependent on us. 

If you are eating turkey for Thanksgiving, there is no excuse to not watch the latest video of what they must endure for you. 

It'll upset you? 

Too bad. 

If you can chow down on these animals you damn well better get the fortitude to endure a witness position to their plight.

It is the least you can do. 

Search "Peta Turkey Abuse"