On Thursday, tens of millions of Americans will partake in a national ritual many of us say we dont especially enjoy or find meaning in. We will collectively eat more than 40 million turkeys factory farmed and heavily engineered animals that bear scant resemblance to the wild birds that have been apocryphally written into the Thanksgiving story. (The first Thanksgiving probably didnt have turkey.) And we will do it all even though turkey meat is widely considered flavorless and unpalatable. It is, almost without fail, a dried-out, depressing hunk of sun-baked papier-mch a jaw-tiringly chewy, unsatisfying, and depressingly bland workout, journalist Brian McManus wrote for Vice. Deep down, we know this, but bury it beneath happy memories of Thanksgivings past. So what is essentially the national holiday of meat-eating revolves around an animal dish that no one really likes. That fact clashes with the widely accepted answer to the central question of why its so hard to convince everyone to ditch meat, or even to eat less of it: the taste, stupid. Undoubtedly, that has something to do with it. But I think the real answer is a lot more complicated, and the tasteless Thanksgiving turkey explains why. Get Voxs Processing Meat newsletterSign up here for Future Perfects biweekly newsletter from Marina Bolotnikova and Kenny Torrella, exploring how the meat and dairy industries shape our health, politics, culture, environment, and more.Have questions or comments on this piece? Email me at marina@vox.com!Humans crave ritual, belonging, and a sense of being part of a larger story aspirations that reach their apotheosis at the Thanksgiving table. We dont want to be social deviants who boycott the central symbol of one of our most cherished national holidays, reminding everyone of the animal torture and environmental degradation that went into making it. What could be more human than to go along with it, dry meat and all? Our instincts for conformity seem particularly strong around food, a social glue that binds us to one another and to our shared past. And although many of us today recognize theres something very wrong with how our meat is produced, Thanksgiving of all occasions might seem like an ideal time to forget that for a day. In my experience, plenty of people who are trying to cut back on meat say they eat vegetarian or vegan when cooking for themselves but when they are guests at other peoples homes or celebrating a special occasion, theyll eat whatever, to avoid offending their hosts or provoking awkward conversations about factory farming. But this Thanksgiving, I want to invite you, reader, to flip this logic. If the social and cultural context of food shapes our tastes, even more than taste itself, then it is in precisely these settings that we should focus efforts to change American food customs for the better. Its eating with others where we actually have an opportunity to influence broader change, to share plant-based recipes, spark discussion, and revamp traditions to make them more sustainable and compassionate, Natalie Levin, a board member at PEAK Animal Sanctuary in Indiana and an acquaintance of mine from vegan Twitter, told me.Hundreds of years ago, a turkey on Thanksgiving might have represented abundance and good tidings a too-rare thing in those days, and therefore something to be grateful for. Today, its hard to see it as anything but a symbol of our profligacy and unrestrained cruelty against nonhuman animals. On a day meant to embody the best of humanity, and a vision for a more perfect world, surely we can come up with better symbols. Besides, we dont even like turkey. We should skip it this year. The misery of the Thanksgiving turkey In 2023, my colleague Kenny Torrella published a wrenching investigation into conditions in the US turkey industry. He wrote: The Broad Breasted White turkey, which accounts for 99 out of every 100 grocery store turkeys, has been bred to emphasize you guessed it the breast, one of the more valuable parts of the bird. These birds grow twice as fast and become nearly twice as big as they did in the 1960s. Being so top-heavy, combined with other health issues caused by rapid growth and the unsanitary factory farming environment, can make it difficult for them to walk.Another problem arises from their giant breasts: The males get so big that they cant mount the hens, so they must be bred artificially.Author Jim Mason detailed this practice in his book The Ethics of What We Eat, co-authored with philosopher Peter Singer. Mason took a job with the turkey giant Butterball to research the book, where, he wrote, he had to hold male turkeys while another worker stimulated them to extract their semen into a syringe using a vacuum pump. Once the syringe was full, it was taken to the henhouse, where Mason would pin hens chest-down while another worker inserted the contents of the syringe into the hen using an air compressor.Workers at the farm had to do this to one hen every 12 seconds for 10 hours a day. It was the hardest, fastest, dirtiest, most disgusting, worst-paid work he had ever done, Mason wrote.In the wild, turkeys live in smallish groups of a dozen or so, and they know each other, they relate to each other as individuals, Singer, author of the new book Consider the Turkey, said on a recent episode of the Simple Heart podcast. The turkeys sold on Thanksgiving never see their mothers, they never go and forage for food Theyre pretty traumatized, Id say, by having thousands of strange birds around who they cant get to know as individuals, packed together in crowded sheds. From birth to death, the life of a factory-farmed turkey is one punctuated by rote violence, including mutilations to their beaks, their toes, and snoods, a grueling trip to the slaughterhouse, and a killing process where theyre roughly grabbed and prodded, shackled upside down, and sent down a fast-moving conveyor belt of killing. If theyre lucky, they get stunned and then the knife cuts their throat, Singer said. If theyre not so lucky, they miss the stunner and the knife cuts their throat while theyre fully conscious. On Thanksgiving, Americans throw the equivalent of about 8 million of these turkeys in the trash, according to an estimate by ReFED, a nonprofit that works to reduce food waste. And this year will be the third Thanksgiving in a row celebrated amid an out-of-control bird flu outbreak, in which tens of millions of chickens and turkeys on infected farms have been culled using stomach-churning extermination methods. Turkeys depopulated using firefighting foam after a bird flu outbreak. Glass Walls/We Animals MediaTwo baby turkeys still alive after their flockmates were culled with firefighting foam due to a bird flu outbreak in Israel. Glass Walls/We Animals MediaReclaiming ThanksgivingWhen I search for the language for this grim state of affairs, I can only describe it in religious terms, as a kind of desecration of our planets abundance, of our humanity, of life itself. On every other day of the year, its obscene enough. On a holiday thats supposed to represent our gratitude for the Earths blessings, you can understand why Thanksgiving, for many vegetarians or vegans, is often described as the most alienating day of the year. I count myself among that group, although I dont dread Thanksgiving. Ive come to love it as a holiday ripe for creative reinvention. I usually spend it making a feast of plant-based dishes (known by most people as sides, though theres no reason they cant be the main event). To name a few: a creamy lentil-stuffed squash, cashew lentil bake, a bright autumnal brussels sprout salad, roasted red cabbage with walnuts and feta (sub with dairy-free cheese), mushroom clam-less chowder (I add lots of white beans), challah for bread rolls, a pumpkin miso tart more complex and interesting than any Thanksgiving pie youve had, and rasmalai, a Bengali dessert whose flavors align beautifully with the holidays. Vegan turkey roasts are totally optional, though many of them have gotten very good in recent years I love the Gardein breaded roast and Field Roast hazelnut and cranberry. You can also make your own. The hardest part of going meatless is not about the food (if it were, it might not be so hard to convince Americans to abandon parched roast turkey). Its about unpleasant truths and ethical disagreements being brought out into the open, Levin said, about confronting the bizarre dissonance in celebrations of joy and giving carved from mass-produced violence. These conversations are not easy, but they are worth having. And we dont have to fear losing the rituals that define us as Americans. To the contrary, culture is a continuous conversation we have with each other about our shared values and any culture thats not changing is dead. Theres far more meaning to be had, Ive found, in adapting traditions that are no longer authentic to our ethics and violate our integrity. We can start on Thanksgiving.Rescued turkeys at Farm Sanctuary, an organization in upstate New York that cares for rescued farm animals, feast on a banquet of fruits and vegetables on Thanksgiving. Jo-Anne McArthur/We AnimalsYouve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More: