A COK Report:
Animal Suffering in the Turkey Industry

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Breeding

An American consumes, on average, seventeen pounds of turkey meat per year.(1) To satisfy this appetite, 252 million turkeys are killed in the United States each year.(2) More than 45 million of these turkeys are killed for Thanksgiving, alone, and over 20 million are killed for Christmas.(3)

Virtually all of these turkeys come from fast-growing strains produced by three primary breeding companies.(4) These turkeys have been intensively bred to produce the most meat in the shortest amount of time, using the least amount of feed. In the 1960s, it took 220 days to raise a 35-pound turkey. In 2004, it took only 132 days.(5) While this rapid growth has increased producers' profits, it has contributed to a number of serious welfare problems, including skeletal, respiratory, and cardiovascular disease, as well as chronic hunger in breeding stock. Animal scientist Dr. Ian Duncan has concluded, "Without a doubt, the biggest welfare problems for meat birds are those associated with fast growth."(6)

The most severe of these problems are skeletal diseases, such as hip lesions and tibial dyschondroplasia. One study found that between 7 and 28 percent of turkeys suffered hip lesions, while 17 to 83 percent exhibited abnormal gait.(7) In tibial dyschondroplasia, an abnormal mass of cartilage extends across the tibia, causing bone deformity and lameness. Incidences as high as 73 percent have been reported in turkey flocks.(8) Mortality due to skeletal diseases has ranged from 2.7 to 4 percent.(9)

According to a report in industry journal Feedstuffs, " [T]urkeys have been bred to grow faster and heavier but their skeletons haven't kept pace, which causes 'cowboy legs.' Commonly, the turkeys have problems standing . . . and fall and are trampled on or seek refuge under feeders, leading to bruises and downgradings as well as culled or killed birds."(10) A scientific review concluded, "There is no doubt that the rapid growth rate of birds used for meat production is the fundamental cause of skeletal disorders, nor that this situation has been brought about by the commercial selection programmes used over a period of 40-50 generations."(11)

One animal scientist has argued that, due to skeletal disorders, "we must conclude that approximately one quarter of the heavy strains of broiler chicken and turkey are in chronic pain for approximately one third of their lives. . . . [T]his must constitute, in both magnitude and severity, the single most severe, systematic example of man's inhumanity to another sentient animal."(12)

The unnaturally rapid growth common among farmed turkeys causes other welfare problems, as well: lowered immune performance, making turkeys more susceptible to a variety of diseases; increased rates of the muscle disease, focal myopathy; and increased rates of ascites, perirenal hemorrhage syndrome, cardiomyopathy ("round heart" disease), and aortic rupture, with mortality rates from these causes as high as 10 percent.(13)

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