This New Billboard Should Make Canadian Thanksgiving Interesting…

Ahead of Canadian Thanksgiving on October 9, PETA is placing a new billboard near several Winnipeg elementary schools. The billboard will aim to spark a family dialogue about going vegan by showing children that animals are individuals who shouldn’t be carved up and eaten on Thanksgiving or any other day of the year.

“Children have a natural empathy for animals, so they’d be horrified to learn that gentle turkeys are babies themselves when they’re strung upside down and slaughtered,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “This Thanksgiving, PETA is calling on children and their parents to keep cruelty off the table.”

Canadians ate 7.3 million turkeys last year, 2.6 million of whom were killed for Thanksgiving alone. In nature, turkeys are protective and loving parents as well as spirited explorers who can climb trees and run as fast as 40 kilometers per hour. In the wild, turkeys can live up to 10 years, but those raised for food are normally slaughtered when they’re between 12 and 26 weeks old. The young birds are hung by their feet from metal shackles and dragged through an electrified bath that can cause them to have full-body tremors. They’re often still conscious when their throats are slit and they’re dumped into a bath of scalding-hot water to remove their feathers.

What You Can Do

This Thanksgiving, leave the dead bird off your table, and check out these 16 vegan Thanksgiving recipes that taste as good as they look.