New Video ‘Roasts’ Butterball with ‘Honest Turkey Helpline’

In PETA’s Version, Alexa Shares Real Tips About Turkeys

For Immediate Release:
November 20, 2018

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

Now that Butterball is inviting people to ask Alexa how to cook turkeys, PETA has launched a new parody video with an honest version of the turkey vendor’s helpline.  In the video, Alexa answers a little girl and her mother by playing them the sound of a turkey’s dying cries, showing them gruesome footage from inside an actual Butterball slaughterhouse, and more. The video concludes, “Butterball’s new Alexa turkey helpline—you might not want to ask!”

“PETA’s video spoofs the companies that try to slap a happy face on stringing up and slaughtering millions of terrified young birds,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “If families knew about the pain and suffering behind each turkey corpse sold by Butterball, they’d be asking Alexa for vegan Thanksgiving recipes.”

At least 44 million turkeys are killed in the U.S. each year for Thanksgiving. While turkeys in the wild can live up to 10 years, those raised for food are normally slaughtered when they’re 5 months old. The young birds are hung by their feet from metal shackles and dragged through an electrified bath, and they’re often still conscious when their throats are slit and they’re dumped into scalding-hot defeathering tanks. A PETA exposé of a Butterball slaughterhouse found that workers stomped on birds, slammed them into walls, and tore off their limbs.

Past Thanksgiving parody videos from PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—include a “Tof*cken” cooking tutorial.

PETA offers a free vegan starter kit (available here) full of recipes, tips, and more. For more information, please visit PETA.org.