In a letter dispatched to the President Bush, PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk asks him to send this year’s “pardoned” turkeys, Pumpkin and Pecan, to a proper Washington, D.C.–area sanctuary rather than to Disneyland or a working farm, where pardoned turkeys are traditionally sent and where they usually die from their painful genetic defects within the first year — or even within days of arrival.

 

“You might be a lame duck,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a letter to Bush, “but you still have the power to help lame turkeys.”

 

In her letter, Ingrid points out that turkeys raised in factory farms are drugged and bred to grow so quickly that they are beset by painful, crippling injuries and deformities. Because of these problems, the birds’ lives are cut short by years and only a credible sanctuary can meet their critical medical needs. In addition to theme parks, other “pardoned” turkeys have been shipped to Kidwell Farm, a petting zoo at Frying Pan Park in Virginia, where many died within a year — and some within days — of arrival.

 

At least Bush’s turkey-pardoning ceremony was not the gruesome affair Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s was.