If you live in the United States, then odds are that today, you’re eating turkey. It’s Thanksgiving — that’s what we Americans do. Some fifty million turkeys are consumed in the states every year on Thanksgiving, keeping with a centuries-old tradition started by the first Europeans to come to this land. But the land has changed since the pilgrims shot their first wild turkey; forests have been clear-cut, making way for agricultural fields and urban centers. Rivers have been dammed and diverted, and many of the beasts and birds that once dominated the landscape have been depleted or exterminated. Even the turkeys have changed — they’ve nearly doubled in size from selective breeding, with breasts so large that they cannot fly or mate, needing human hands to perform the act of insemination using a device ironically akin to a baster.
According to scientists at the University of Manchester, over 25 lbs of carbon dioxide emissions are produced to raise each chubby bird we consume. That means we pay for our Thanksgiving feast by releasing over 1.25 billion pounds of climate changing carbon dioxide into our already carbon-laden atmosphere.
But there is another way. Rather than turkey for your holiday feasts, consider instead the delicious flesh of the turkeyfish.
Continue reading “Trading Turkey for Turkeyfish: A Holiday Proposal”
