Bill Maher: George Bush: Pardon All The Turkeys

[marmar]

from HuffPost:




Bill Maher
George Bush: Pardon All The Turkeys
Posted November 20, 2007 | 05:19 PM (EST)



New Rule: The president can't pardon just one or two turkeys this Thanksgiving. He's got to let them all go.

It's probably too much to expect from the man who wanted "no child left behind," then vetoed health care for kids. But think of the upside. Freeing the turkeys might help the president's credibility when he says things like, "We don't torture."

Take a look at this video, shot just last month at a typical American turkey slaughterhouse, and this one, shot undercover last year at a Butterball slaughterhouse by investigators from PETA, and you'll see that my use of the word is no exaggeration. Butterball employees, taking a page out of the Abu Ghraib handbook, laughed while they kicked, punched, stomped, and even sexually assaulted turkeys.

These people should be arrested. They would be if the turkeys were dogs or cats. Too bad our animal protection laws make about as much sense as fighting a war against a country that doesn't have an army. Even though 98 percent of the land animals Americans eat are turkeys and chickens, the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act specifically excludes birds from protection. I'm not kidding.

The Butterball plant in the video slaughters about 50,000 turkeys every day. Fifty million turkey corpses will go into American ovens this Thanksgiving. More than 9 billion turkeys and chickens are killed in the U.S. each year. But not one of them is guaranteed a painless death, as documented in this video that was narrated by my fellow animal-lover and HuffPo Blogger, Alec Baldwin. The Senate can find time to vote to condemn an advertisement, but not to add birds to humane slaughter laws.

So in the face of this surreal situation, in which, once again we can't put our faith in the president, I ask you to do what I'm going to do and pardon a turkey this Thanksgiving. It's not hard. Just eat something else (ideas here and here). Not someone else, because it doesn't seem fair to spare a turkey and roast a hunk of pig or cow instead. If we can bow our heads in gratitude for our families, our friends and our big screen TVs, and then carve into a creature who lived a miserable life and died a horrible death, then our ethics are about as sensible as Britney's parenting skills. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/george-bush-pardon-all-t_b_73574.html

[PinkTiger]

1. I'm sorry, but this is the silliest thing I've ever heard of.

I'm talking about the PETA film on the Huffington Post website.
I refuse to waste even one moment worrying about the turkeys and the chickens and the other animals, when the real travesty is how the workers are treated in these plants. Many of them are undocumented aliens who are exploited by their employers, who encourage them to cross the border illegally and work in substandard, dangerous conditions.

So if you want a real reason to avoid meat and poultry that comes from the nation's slaughterhouses, think of the humanity. Or rather, the inhumanity.

As for me and my family, we raise our own food and eat our own harvested beef. We buy organic - cage-free eggs, and chickens. When possible we slaughter our own. We are meat eaters. But we have a conscience.