Thanksgiving week is a difficult week for me. I am always reminded of my grandfather's death on Thanksgiving in 1999. It is also not in my list of favorite holiday weeks because I am saddened by the staggering number of turkeys that are slaughtered for this holiday. Several sources, including PETA, share that nearly 45 million turkeys are killed for Thanksgiving alone. That is just for one day!
I am always so disgusted that our way of giving thanks is by senselessly slaughtering millions of innocent birds. What a sad and disrespectful way to give thanks. I would think that we should be honoring life.
To do my part to reject this ridiculous tradition, I attend the Triangle Vegetarian's Society Vegan Thanksgiving celebration. This celebration welcomes over 800 people to share in an all vegan, cruelty-free meal. It is a pretty awesome event with wonderful food and great people.
John and I thought we needed to do more this year, so we decided to Adopt-A-Turkey through the Farm Sanctuary. The Farm Sanctuary rescues turkeys and places them into loving homes. Now, we didn't actually get a turkey to come and live at our home, we just donated money to have a turkey saved. The organization also has adoption events, educates the public, and provides resources for cruelty free holiday eating. I hope next year to save two turkeys, but this year we started with one.
As you think about giving thanks this year, consider adopting a turkey, eating a vegetarian/vegan Thanksgiving meal, and taking a stand against animal cruelty. I'll leave you with a quote from Bruce Friedrich from The Huffington Post.
"Vegetarianism allows me to live my values -- to "pray ceaselessly," as St. Paul puts it: Every time I sit down to eat, I cast my lot: for mercy, against misery; for the oppressed, against the oppressor; and for compassion, against cruelty. There is a lot of suffering in the world, but how much suffering can be addressed with literally no time or effort on our part? We can just stop supporting it, by making different choices"
2 comments:
OK, so I saw the title, and immediately thought that I might be about to get some rich parents, but alas, no such luck for me.
haha, Jim! Beautiful post!
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