A COK Report:
Animal Suffering in the Turkey Industry

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Housing

Before World War II, most turkeys were free range, roaming in open pens. In 1931, turkey production was written about, thus: "Turkeys cannot be kept in small cramped surroundings . . . . The turkey is a great forager and will wander about all day, picking up grubs and insects, and incidentally doing good to the land . . . . overcrowding is fatal, and each bird should be allowed 8 square feet of floor-space."(14)

By the 1940s, farms began rearing turkeys in intensive confinement, without outdoor access, to increase economic efficiency. "More economical production is achieved by full confinement rearing," wrote industry authors.(15) Like most farmed poultry, turkeys are now crowded indoors in large warehouses, where they may never see daylight. A typical industrial turkey shed houses 10,000 to 25,000 birds with only one to four square feet of floor space per bird, depending on age.(16) Such confinement causes a number of welfare problems, including stress, disease, and aggression.(17)

Grower houses are commonly windowless and force-ventilated to control temperature. They are barren except for litter material on the floor and rows of feeders and drinkers. Despite generations of breeding, turkeys have maintained their most basic natural instincts to forage. The barren environment of grower sheds frustrates these instincts and the lack of substrate for foraging causes many birds to redirect their pecking at other birds, causing injuries.(18) To reduce pecking, light levels in grower houses are kept as low as 1 lux. Such low light levels cause stress in turkeys, who prefer brighter light to explore their environment, as well as abnormalities in physiology and eye morphology.(19)

Overcrowding in sheds causes air quality to deteriorate. As the weeks pass, turkey excrement accumulates on the floors. As bacteria break down the litter and droppings, the air becomes polluted with ammonia, dust, bacteria, and fungal spores. High ammonia levels cause respiratory irritation and keratoconjunctivitis (ammonia-burned eyes). Ammonia also destroys the cilia that would otherwise prevent harmful bacteria from being inhaled. As a result, turkeys "are inhaling harmful bacteria constantly" and develop respiratory infections, such as airsacculitis.(20)

Turkeys have an acute sense of smell, which they use to perceive their environment. Ammonia fumes inhibit this sense. As one animal scientist put it, "For a bird with an acute sense of olfaction the polluted atmosphere of a poultry house may be the olfactory equivalent of looking through dark glasses."(21)

Overcrowding in sheds also results in the rapid deterioration of litter, causing contact dermatitis—foot-pad lesions, enlarged sternal bursa ("breast blisters"), focal ulcerative dermatitis ("breast buttons"), and hock burns, all believed to be painful.(22) One study found that 98 percent of turkeys suffered foot-pad lesions under commercial conditions,(23) while another found 67 percent of turkeys suffered breast buttons.(24) These lesions become pathways to bacterial infections.(25)

One scientific study concluded that "density had potentially deleterious effects on the welfare of turkeys: a tendency to more disturbance of resting birds by other birds, a decreased gait score, a greater incidence of foot-pad dermatitis and of hip lesions, and a decrease in body weight."(26) In such overcrowded conditions, factory farmers accept that many birds will die from disease, stress, and injury—the average mortality rate on U.S. turkey farms is 10 percent.(27) But there remains an economic rationale for farms to overcrowd the birds. As one industry manual explains, "[L]imiting the floor space gives poorer results on a bird basis, yet the question has always been and continues to be: What is the least amount of floor space necessary per bird to produce the greatest return on investment."(28)

Alternative housing systems do exist but are often not what is advertised. For producers to apply the term "free range" to their turkey meat requires only that the turkeys have access to the outdoors. There is no specification for the frequency, duration, or quality of outdoor access available to the birds. All other aspects of a free-range turkey's life (including genotype) can be identical to those of a conventionally-raised turkey. University of California-Davis poultry specialist, Ralph Ernst reports: "Most free-range birds are still fenced in corrals, though people like to imagine the birds are out roaming the range. They're not out exercising. These birds are raised much like the regular turkeys."(29)

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