Turkey

OK, so the post about Sarah Palin and her turkey slaughter got me wondering: how is a modern Thanksgiving made possible? Well, the joys of industrial turkey farming are explained by Nina Rastogi in Slate thusly:

How do turkeys breed? With a little help from their human friends. The vast majority of turkeys sold in the United States are of the white broad-breasted variety. These birds have been bred to produce as much white breast meat as possible, resulting in males so large and unwieldy that they can't properly mount the females. Toms therefore have to be manually stimulated and "milked" for their semen, which is then inserted into a hen using a syringe. Some have decried the assembly-line-like process as inhumane—at the very least, as chronicled in this not-entirely-safe-for-work clip from Discovery's Dirty Jobs, it is extremely messy. Farmers also use artificial lights to trick birds into thinking that it's spring—their natural breeding season—all year-round, thereby increasing their production.

Wow, cool. Something tells me that I missed something not working at least a summer in a slaughterhouse. Seriously.

In my family, of course, we'll have a kosher turkey from Empire. At $1.99/lb, very expensive, but also a relative bargain. Here's the explanation:

While special machinery is used throughout the process, much of the work here is still done by hand. That's one of the reasons it takes three times as long to process an Empire Kosher bird and why it costs more. The hand processing includes extra steps, extra inspections. By the time a bird is packed, it has been looked over by hundreds of experienced eyes.

Which means half of hundreds of experienced people, unless the mashgiachs are cyborgs.

Of course, for some detailed instructions as to how to hand slaughter a turkey, this site looks second to none. Not for the squeamish:

If the bird has been properly starved, there won't be any feces in the intestine. Sometimes, there is just a bit on the inside of the vent, and you can see it in this photo. Either work quickly or wipe clean with a paper towel. Keep the bird over the edge of the table to avoid any fecal matter from dropping on the table.

Happy Thanksgiving!