Re: [OT:] Thanksgiving

From: Jim Yanik (jyanik_at_abuse.gov.)
Date: 11/25/04 

Date: 25 Nov 2004 21:01:39 GMT

Jonathan Kirwan <jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote in
news:9o8cq05sn6vfn0nnsho3e674c6jv8ravfr@4ax.com:

> On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 17:01:01 GMT, Fred Bloggs <nospam@nospam.com>
> wrote:
>
>>Active8 wrote:
>>> On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 05:12:30 +0000, Guy Macon wrote:
>>>
>>> That was a nice excerpt for turkey day. Have a nice one, everyone.
>>> If you're not celebrating, have a nice day anyway.
>>
>>Heheh- you do know you will be eating a "genetically modified turkey"
>>that is so damned fat it would drop dead of a heart attack if it was
>>so adventurous as to take ten steps out of its cage:-) Sounds classy
>>eh...ummm-hmmmm good!- enjoy your new breasts:-)
>
> I've a small farm with turkeys, pheasants, chickens, quail, guineas,
> ducks, and geese (and rabbits, chipmunks, finches, a parrot, cats, and
> a dog -- the six cats all get along perfectly with the parrot,
> finches, and chipmunks, just liking to lay around them but never
> hurting any. Everyone is completely trustworthy with the rest and in
> fact act to protect each other.) I keep them mostly for two reasons
> -- a petting 'zoo' for disabled children who come here and as a source
> of eating eggs.
>
> Since I just learned what good pets turkeys make, we don't eat turkeys
> now. They are just way too gentle and caring.
>
> But I discovered some of the truth in Fred's comment along the way. I
> went down to our local feed store and bought three turkeys two years
> ago for the first time. One each of three different breeds --
> including a "wild turkey," a "Bourbon red" turkey, and a so-called
> "bronze-breasted." We were stunned at how fast the bronze-breasted
> grew up, compared with the other two.
>
> When the other two arrived at their final size, the differences were
> obvious: the wild turkey was the slimmest and perfectly competent at
> flying like a bird (all of our birds are free-ranging, here.) She
> could fly just as well and just as high as our quail or pheasants.
> (She's very nice and talks about almost everything, too.) Our Bourbon
> red is a male, somewhat larger, and flies "mostly" -- in other words,
> prefers to stay on the ground but can fly when pushed. The
> bronze-breasted is so large and over-the-edge heavy that she would
> often prefer to simply sit on the ground and, we could tell, has some
> trouble even walking because of the strain.
>
> It made us furious to see this kind of thing done. It was patently
> clear that the bronze-breasted was _developed_ for the sole purpose of
> rapidly growing for early slaughter (less effort and less risk at
> market because the time between the decision to grow them and the time
> they are sold is short, meaning that the outcome is more predictable)
> at a good profit ...
>
> ... and it is also patently clear that this animal could never survive
> for long on its own.
> personality
>
> Wild oranges look almost nothing compared to what we are sold in the
> stores -- they are developed for high water content and low use of
> fertilizers, so that they cost less to grow and sell for more.
> Washington apples, even those that are only brought into the state
> from elsewhere for a time, wind up in cold storage and taste "corky"
> and bad to someone like me, who grew up on an orchard (I cannot eat
> Washington apples), because they will spend anywhere from six to 18
> months in a special kind of cold storage so they can be sold all year
> 'round. Chicken eggs from the stores have often been a long time in
> storage and are frighteningly poor quality, when compared to my eggs
> from our chickens and ducks (you can test by dropping the insides from
> about a meter above the kitchen floor -- if the yolk breaks, throw it
> away; if not, it's fresh and will taste good -- no store-bought egg
> will survive this test as they are too old and probably developed by
> chickens never allowed to move much.) Vitamins are extracted from
> various grains before they are sold as flour and a small amount is
> metered back in as "enrichment," with the rest being sold into the
> lucrative vitamin market (which you need to take, if you are trying to
> live on the nearly useless flour!) Hormones are added to cows and wind
> up in our milk and meat supplies. Etc.
>
> Our entire food system is optimized for profit at levels few of us
> realize.

It also makes for greater supplies of foods.More people eat at better
levels.

But if you want to raise your own,or buy unengineered foods,no problem
there. 

-- 
Jim Yanik
jyanik-at-kua.net

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