Turkey Traumas

I under cooked my Thanksgiving turkey and had to throw it out. Then on Christmas Day, I went to cook a turkey breast and discovered after unwrapping it that one entire side was... let's just say damaged tissue. As though the poultry people had gone really medieval on it. Skin flaps and torn meat hanging everywhere AND the dang thing had green membrane all over.

So we wrapped it in multiple trash bags and put it in the garbage. We did this gently, in an ironic gesture of respect for what that poor bird must have gone through during final processing. This in spite of the fact that we were fully prepared to eat it.

Curiosity led me to Google traumatized turkey tissue and similar terms. Nothing surfaced that fit my partial bird's mangled condition, but I did learn interesting facts about deep pectoral myothapy and other bad stuff that happens to poultry raised in intensive conditions.

To my fellow animal rights advocates, I apologize. Perhaps this blog post should be about staging an Occupy All Slaughterhouses protest. I really do care about humane treatment of animals, including those raised and processed for human consumption. There is nothing humorous about current global practices, and I applaud activists for their work in this area.

Like millions of others, I blindly assume that my personal piece of Christmas fowl grew up roaming corn-strewn open fields and was humanely "processed" after living a quality life. Aren't many of you similarly deluded? And now, having spied with my own two eyes some pummeled poultry, I feel all guilty about the plight of farm animals that are at our mercy. We can't take care of each other, much less the animals who - after a couple of millenia of domestication - depend upon us.

PETA urges us to abandon all use of animals for food. I understand their worldview, and could easily adopt a vegetarian lifestyle fairly. But the reality is that my husband of almost a quarter of a century would never give up six decades of carnivorous behavior. And our son is cut from the same cloth. I am outnumbered and not up to fighting them about this. There are other battles that require my attention.

In my ideal world, we would treat well all creatures of the earth. We would not hunt for sport, poach until a species' extinction, kill without mercy, or abandon pets who depend on us for survival and companionship. We would not cage birds or contain beta fish in bowls smaller than a martini glass.

We would, however, continue to consume animals for sustenance. Too many species have become way too domesticated at this point to turn the evolutionary tide. But we would use the power of market forces to ensure that animals be killed using only the most humane methods. It is possible. We simply need to practice zero tolerance for anything less than best practice.

Who knows why turkey tissue caused me to turn so serious tonight. Just pensive, I guess. We haven't seen the sun for days and my husband and son are lost to Monday Night Football. I'm alone in the kitchen where I can't resist the urge to wipe counter tops, rearrange stuff in the cabinets, and do other obsessive-compulsive things.

I'm a typical spouse of a husband who happens to have cancer. Calm on the outside - by God's grace - but constantly churning on the inside. Thus, tonight finds me pondering the problems of poultry processing.

Oh, don't worry. I'll get my mojo back. And maybe I'll successfully cook a turkey breast sometime soon. In the meantime, I'll dang sure read up on the best and worst of poultry farms and processing plants, and purchase more wisely in the days to come.