A n i m a l   W r i t e s © sm

The official ANIMAL RIGHTS ONLINE newsletter

~  S P E C I A L   T H A N K S G I V I N G   I S S U E  ~


  
 Publisher   ~ EnglandGal@aol.com                                          Issue # 11/19/00
        Editor    ~ Corrynthia@aol.com
    Journalists ~ Park StRanger@aol.com
                     ~ MicheleARivera@aol.com
                     ~
SavingLife@aol.com

    THE EIGHT ARTICLES IN THIS SPECIAL EDITION ISSUE ARE:
  
    1  ~ Channel 3 News - by KMBWolf@aol.com
    2
 ~ Turkeys Want to be Friends, Not Food - Karen Davis, UPC
    3  
~ Recipes - From and collected by Corrynthia@aol.com
    4  ~
November is Adopt A Turkey Month! - Farm Sanctuary
    5  ~
Where's the Bird?  A 'Turkey-free' Thanksgiving -  vrc@tiac.net (VRG)
    6  ~ Book Ideas
    7  ~ Poem: A Native American Thanksgiving - Ajkish4460@aol.com
    8  ~ Quote to Remember: Matt Ball, Vegan Outreach Cofounder


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Channel 3 News
by KMBWolf@aol.com - staff writer

"Good evening, I'm Kimberly Lobo, and you're watching Channel 3's 11 o'clock news."

"Tonight's top story, thousands, maybe even millions, are being murdered as we speak. Our own Steve Vulpine is out on the scene. Steve?"

"Thank you, Kimberly. I'm standing here, and as you can see, the scene is a terrifying one. Blood everywhere, screams, terror. These murders have been committed for weeks, and there's no sign of slowing down. It's terrible.  The bodies are flung into trucks and taken away. Where to, we don't know yet. The killers continue their massacre, without so much as a blink. I talked to one of them earlier. Here's what he had to say."

"Heh, it's a living. Better them than me, that's all I know. It's my job, and I'll continue doing it."

"There is no compassion here. The footage we've obtained is not suitable to show, but you can see from behind me what's going on. The stench is terrible, and the number of lives lost continues to grow. The noise is deafening. The victims are being crushed, kicked, and beaten before they are killed at the hands of the murderers. As you can see, there are bodies all over the floor, most of them trampled into unrecognizable figures. This is the worst I've ever seen. It makes me sick to be here, but also thankful that I am alive, and not tortured, as these souls are."

"Are there any actions being taken by the public, Steve?"

"Kimberly, the public eye is turned away from this, because they don't want to believe this horror is happening. Most people don't even know what is going on here. But a rare few have protested this massacre, crying out to a public that just won't listen. If they could only see what I have seen tonight, they would speak out against this atrocity. What's worse is that the government funds this. And these lives are unnecessarily lost. We can only hope that this broadcast can show our viewers the real truth. Live at the Northern Brooks Turkey Slaughterhouse, I'm Steve Vulpine, Channel 3 News."

"Thank you, Steve. Coming up after the break, 'Who's on your plate?' "

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Turkeys Want to Be Friends, Not Food
by Karen Davis, PhD - karend@CapAccess.org

The wild turkey the early Europeans and colonists encountered was not the bird that dominates 20th-century hunters' talk. In anecdote after anecdote from the 17th through the 19th centuries, the wild turkey was characterized as showing an almost Disneylike friendliness towards people. Wild turkeys, as the first settlers found them, walked right up to them. Sadly, the birds were likely to be met with a bang for their bravery.

Here are some examples of early encounters between Man and the Bird as told by the settlers. "Wild turkeys drinking at the river were so undisturbed by a nearby hunter that he took away their broods of chicks without difficulty."  "They came so close to people they could be shot with a pistol."  "They hovered close to our fire so we killed them all." "Wild turkeys would come to our house and roost in the trees with the chickens. They often sat with their young on my fences so trustingly that I found it difficult to bring myself to shoot them."

While these wild turkeys were alert, wary, savvy, and fully capable of living successfully in a natural environment, they had not yet learned to live in terror of humans. The terrified turkey was created, not born. Indeed, the wild turkey of today is in many ways an invention that raises questions about the notion of "wild." Restoration of decimated turkey populations in North America has involved extensive manipulations of both the bird and its habitat: supplemental winter feeding including a variety of special types of feeders and shelters, burning of forests and planting of grain crops, wing-clipping, artificial incubation, culling of captive-raised birds to conform to shifting standards of "purity" and "wildness," transfer of pen-raised young and wild-captured adults from one place to another using traps, nets, airplane drops and immobilizing drugs, and release of thousands of game-farm hybrid turkeys prior to hunting season.

In the history of human and turkey relations, a combination of direct human interventions, random matings, and turkey escapes and vanishings has resulted in wildness "tainted with domestic blood" and introduction of diseases to wild turkey populations. Today, at the start of a new century, despite a tremendous effort to create a "wild" turkey distinct from its domestic cousins, this noble nomad keeps returning to the human scene, walking around in suburbia, metropolitan Atlanta, the Bronx.

This is delightful, unless it becomes an excuse for more hunting, as in the past it was a reason why the friendly and inquisitive turkey became a byword for an easy target, "someone who could be easily duped or caught," in the first place.

However, things are starting to change. Slowly but surely, the sentiment of sentience is winning out in our society over contempt for animals, of which the turkey has been a powerful if ambiguous symbol in America. Because of the bird's mythic role in American history, the turkey comes loaded with an ambivalence that is starting to work to the bird's advantage, as well as to ours.  Just as the wild bird and the domestic bird amalgamate in the popular image and the DNA of the Thanksgiving Turkey, so left-handedly honored, so the turkey, which has functioned primarily as a sport and a sacrifice, is increasingly being given a new role, being "adopted" by people and treated as a guest at the Thanksgiving table, showing there may be better ways of honoring kinship and exorcising our guilt -- if guilt is involved -- than by saying, over and over, "I'm sorry." More and more Americans are throwing taboo to the winds and speaking up for turkeys, loving them, maybe, for who they are as much as for what they might stand for. Increasingly, unanimous deprecation and consumption of the turkey can no longer be counted on to pull America together at Thanksgiving.  A new consciousness of human-animal kinship is arising and new culinary opportunities are emerging.

The news about eating animal products is not good in any case. Because of how they are raised, turkeys and other poultry go to slaughter infested with disease organisms including salmonella and campylobacter bacteria.  According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Foods most likely to carry pathogens [disease microbes] are high-protein, nonacid foods, such as meat, poultry, seafood, dairy products, and eggs" (USDA FoodReview, May-August 1995). Significantly, the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows turkey slaughter to be down 4 percent in 1999 over the previous year, reflecting declining consumer purchases (USDA Agricultural Census 1999).  Celebration can include evolution. Just as western culture long ago substituted bread and wine for animal (and human) sacrifice in traditional religious celebrations, as in the Christian Eucharist, literally a "thanksgiving," so the tofu turkey and thousands of other nonanimal food choices are replacing the traditional corpse at the festive meal. If bread is not literally muscle tissue and wine is not blood, few people are clamoring for a return to the "good old days" of bloody altars and struggling victims.

In this same tradition of progress, the New American Pioneers are carving out fresh places for humans and turkeys to come together in a spirit of friendship.  This, after all, is the true gift that the turkey brought to the table in the first place.  Let us rejoice with our feathered friends.

Copyright UPC. This article appeared in newspapers around the country in November 1999 through the Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Service, to whom we are very grateful. Individuals, organizations, & news media have full permission to copy & reprint and are encouraged to do so.

United Poultry Concerns
www.upc-online.org

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Recipes

    Posole - Native American Thanksgiving
    from: http://www.our-daily-bread.com

     Adapted for vegan:

    2 lg cans of hominy
    3 or 4 cans of vegetable broth or stock
    2 or 3 green chiles (roasted and peeled)
    1 lg  onion, diced
    3 or 4 large carrots, diced
    3 or 4 stalks of celery diced
    Salt and pepper to taste
    1/2 tps EACH oregano, garlic, cumin
    1 Tb Chile powder
    2 Tb fresh cilantro, minced

Yet another appropriate Thanksgiving dish is Posole, which is indigenous to the Native American southwest. Posole is really considered most traditional around Christmastime and is always served New Year's Eve and/or New Year's Day for good luck. However, Pueblo peoples have made posole for generations and it is a staple winter dish.

Saute the onions and celery until the onion is transparent. This can be done with water and veggie stock or with spray-type coatings. Dump everything else in and bring to a low boil. Simmer until you like the texture. The hominy should be really soft, almost to the break-up-and-really-form-a-thick-stew stage.

Serve posole with cornbread and a crisp green salad.  Please consider your tolerance for spices. The heat will come from the green chiles and the chile powder, as well as the black pepper. If you want a little more color in the stew, you could throw in some kernel corn. Hope you enjoy.

    Vegan Waldorf Salad
    Corrynthia@aol.com
    serves 6-8 people

    4 large, ripe apples such as Braeburn or Gala
    1/2 cup raisins
    1/2 cup walnuts, or other nut, chopped
    2 stalks celery, chopped
    2 leaves Romaine lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces
    1/4 cup Vegennaise brand non-dairy mayonnaise (found in the refrigerated
       section of your local health food or whole foods store)

Wash, dry* and core the apples; slice and cut into bite-size pieces into large bowl. Add walnuts, raisins, celery and lettuce.  Stir gently to mix.  Add Vegennaise and mix well.

*I have found it is important to dry the apples after washing them so that the Vegennaise adheres to the apples.

   Confetti Succotash
    Corrynthia@aol.com
 
    12 oz frozen yellow corn
     8 oz frozen white corn
    12 oz frozen lima beans
    12 oz frozen soy beans*
    1/8 cup soy margarine
    Salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot, heat 1 inch of water to boiling.  Add lima and soy beans; cover.  Return to a boil and cook for 5 minutes.  Add corn, cover, and continue cooking for another 3 - 4 minutes.  Remove from heat and strain away water.  Add soy margarine to succotash and stir to melt. Season to taste with salt and pepper.  

*Available in the frozen vegetable section of many health food stores and whole food  supermarkets.  Buy them for this recipe without their pods.

    Garlic Green Beans
    rwedeman@attmail.att.com (Robin S Wedeman)

    3 one-pound cans of French cut green beans
    or  2 small bags frozen French cut green beans
    or  3 boxes frozen French cut green beans

    Marinade:
    2/3 cup oil
    1/2 cup sugar
    5 cloves garlic, minced
    1 Tb salt

Make one day ahead.  If frozen beans are used, cook first.
Mix marinade and toss with beans.  Heat thru before serving.

This makes enough for a crowd, but can be cut down for 2-4 servings.

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November is Adopt-a-Turkey Month!
from: Farm Sanctuary - farmsanc@servtech.com

This Thanksgiving, turkey lovers everywhere can encourage people to feed a turkey—rather than eat a turkey—by joining our Adopt-a-Turkey Project!

Turkey adopters help provide lifelong, loving care for a rescued turkey who resides at a Farm Sanctuary shelter—and your adopted feathered friend teaches people that turkeys have feelings too!

Our annual Adopt-a-Turkey Project saves lives and encourages millions of people to have a vegetarian Thanksgiving. Every year, our turkey friends are “interviewed” by leading newspapers, and national radio & television news programs. Hundreds of Adopt-a-Turkey news stories have opened people’s hearts and minds to the plight of turkeys and other “food animals.”

Please take a moment now, and look over this year’s Turkey Adoption List.  After you’ve picked out your “special someone,” send us your completed Turkey Sponsorship Form, along with your adoption fee ($15 per turkey).  We’ll send you a beautiful, framed photograph of your adopted turkey and an adoption card— which you can proudly display at home or work to provide “food for thought” for your friends and family! This holiday season, be a part of the new Thanksgiving tradition by adopting a turkey…and make this Thanksgiving a happy holiday for ALL.

Turkey lovers can adopt a feathered friend with their VISA or MasterCard by calling our convenient, toll-free TURKEY ADOPTION HOTLINE - Call 1-888-SPONSOR to adopt your turkey today.

Farm Sanctuary
http://www.farmsanctuary.org

For a vegan holiday feast, check out www.tofurky.com

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Where's the bird?
A 'Turkey-free' Thanksgiving

from: vrc@tiac.net (Vegetarian Resource Center)

Press release: November 1999

Most in the United States could not imagine a Thanksgiving celebration without a turkey at its center. But thousands of Americans this year will be sitting down to a traditional Thanksgiving feast - without the turkey.

Why? It's a creative event called the "Turkey-Free" Thanksgiving, which is held the weekend before Thanksgiving in cities around the country. The events, sponsored by the non-profit group EarthSave International, range from potluck dinners to elegant catered affairs. The common theme is a meatless celebration of the fall harvest and education about the impacts of our food choices.

Why 'Turkey-Free'?
Today more people are recognizing the connection between diet and disease.  The North American diet, with its dependence on animal products, has been linked to chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. And the "factory farming" system that produces this animal-based diet is taking a toll on our soil, water, and precious natural resources.

"We want people to see that what they eat affects not only their own health, but also the health of our planet," said EarthSave President Stacey Vicari. "We're encouraging people to participate in the 'Turkey-Free' by enjoying the bounty of grains, vegetables and fruits that are brought by a fall harvest."

Consider these realities:
More than a decade ago, the U.S. Surgeon General sounded an alarm by saying that 68 percent of all diseases are related to diet.  A 6 oz. portion of skinless light turkey meat has 274 calories and 6 grams of fat.  A 6 oz. portion of turkey with the skin has 380 calories and 16 grams of fat.  Turkeys are given antibiotics and growth hormones because they are raised in crowded conditions, with each bird confined to a 3 square foot area.  Producing a pound of animal protein requires about 100 times more water than producing a pound of plant protein.  Many turkeys eat formulated feeds, which often contain the rendered remains of livestock.

What is EarthSave?
EarthSave educates, inspires, and empowers people to shift toward a diet centered around fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes - foods that are healthy for people and for the planet.

EarthSave
http://www.earthsave.org

The Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG)
http://www.vrg.org/

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Book Ideas

     Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message
    By Chief Jake Swamp
    Ages 4 - 8; Hardcover (October 1995)
    Lee & Low Books; ISBN 1880000156

    The Turkey Who Came to Dinner (Rugrats)
    By Kitty Richard, Illustrated by Ed Resto
    Ages 4 - 8; Paperback, 32 pages
    Simon Spotlight; ISBN 0689821433

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Poem

Give Thanks
A Native American Thanksgiving

Ajkish4460@aol.com

Great and Eternal Mystery of Life,
Creator of All Things,
I give thanks for the beauty You put in every
single one of Your creations.
I am grateful that You did not fail
in making every stone, plant,
creature, and human being a
perfect and whole part of the
Sacred Hoop.

I am grateful that You have
allowed me to see the strength and
beauty of All My Relations.

My humble request is that all of
the Children of Earth will learn to
see the same perfection in
themselves.

May none of Your human children
doubt or question Your wisdom,
grace, and sense of wholeness in
giving all of Creation a right to be
living extensions of Your perfect
love.


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Quote To Remember

"We are the lucky ones - we are not standing day after day in a tiny space, breathing the stench of our own waste, waiting only to be slaughtered.  We must do everything possible for those suffering lives of pain and terror."
                                                  --Matt Ball, Vegan Outreach Cofounder

                  Email: vegan@salsgiver.com

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Susan Roghair - EnglandGal@aol.com
Animal Rights Online, President
http://www.oocities.org/RainForest/1395/
  -=Animal RightsOnline=-
&
Advisory Board Member, Animal Rights Network Inc.,
not-for-profit publisher of The Animals' Agenda Magazine
http://www.animalsagenda.org/
The Animals' Agenda Magazine: WebEdition
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