PETA Statement: PETA Calls for President Obama to Pardon All Turkeys

Below, please find a statement from PETA President Ingrid Newkirk responding to the annual presidential turkey pardon:

This tiresome, ridiculous ritual is simply a meat-industry commercial that does not belong on the White House grounds. It’s grotesque to “spare” two turkeys when millions more will have their throats slit and be plunged into scalding-hot defeathering tanks, and it’s farcical to “pardon” birds who have been bred to grow so unnaturally large that their hearts will almost certainly give out before next Thanksgiving. A turkey’s natural life span is up to 10 years, but last year’s “alternate” turkey, Mac, is already dead, and no pardoned turkey has lived past the age of 2. If the Oval Office wants to make an actual difference in any bird’s life, it will stop perpetuating this childish and cruel fantasy and start promoting vegan Thanksgiving meals.

PETA’s motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat.” More information is available here.