Commercial turkey production involves significant welfare compromises. Understanding the key issues helps consumers make more informed choices and advocate for reform.
Commercial turkey production involves systematic welfare compromises built into the genetics of the birds. Lameness, cardiovascular problems, and reproductive inability are features, not bugs, of birds selected purely for growth rate and breast yield. The welfare cost of these traits is paid by hundreds of millions of individual birds annually. Reform requires either genetic change toward healthier slower-growing breeds or reduction in demand for conventionally produced turkey.