#0051—Should Turkeys All Move to Greenland?

As many as 46 million turkeys are killed for Thanksgiving dinners in the USA at the end of November. And in Ireland alone, an estimated 1 million turkeys are eaten at Christmas. In the UK, the Christmas turkey toll is around 10 million.

But why turkeys? What have they ever done to us?

SFX from Pixabay.com and Zapsplat.com

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The Gastronomer's Gazette – Why Turkeys Should Move to Greenland
Any turkey will tell you that the holiday season is a bloody business.
As many as 46 million are killed for Thanksgiving dinners in the USA at the end of November.

(00:26):
And in Ireland alone, an estimated 1 million turkeys are eaten at Christmas.
In the UK, the Christmas turkey toll is around 10 million.
But why turkeys? What have they ever done to us?
Scientists say the turkeys themselves are to blame.
It's a scientific fact that you can only eat something that actually exists in the

(00:50):
first place.
From a scientist's point of view, if a turkey doesn't want to be eaten, it should make
sure it doesn't exist.
Ironically, the turkey can accomplish this by being eaten.
Philosophers, on the other hand, argue that turkeys already don't exist in any meaningful
way.

(01:10):
Ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle took an early lead here.
All three famously asked,
What the hell is a turkey?
Many hundreds of years before turkeys were introduced to Europe.
And the later Western philosophers spent nearly all of their time arguing that you can't

(01:30):
be certain anything is real, including time and possibly philosophers.
Therefore, you can't be sure that you're eating a turkey, even when you and the turkey
are in agreement that you are.
The modern food industry has wholeheartedly bought into this philosophy.
You can buy chicken-flavoured noodles so rich in chicken they are marketed as suitable for

(01:54):
vegetarians.
That's great for chickens, but it doesn't help turkeys, who aren't strict vegetarians
and don't eat noodles.
So perhaps to avoid the annual turkey slaughter in Ireland, the UK and the USA, turkeys should
just all move to Greenland, where turkey mortality rates are very low all year round.

(02:16):
You might ask, how would turkeys get to Greenland, since they are notoriously terrible sailors?
They have, for instance, never placed at the Olympics in any of the sailing events.
In fact, they are so bad at sailing, they've never even qualified.
The simple answer is, they could fly.

(02:36):
Yes, they might look like fat, lumpy, feathered testicles, but turkeys can fly.
This isn't a widely known fact, even among turkeys.
Presumably, if they did know, they wouldn't hang about on turkey farms waiting to be fed to you.
We don't know what would happen if every turkey in the world moved to Greenland.

(02:58):
No ornithologist has ever bothered to write a paper on the topic.
But we do know that if they all went at once, transatlantic airline traffic would be greatly
disrupted.
Also, it would not be a good day for anyone in Greenland to hang out their washing.
The question remains though, why turkeys?

(03:19):
Turkeys are originally from North America.
The Spanish brought them over to Europe in the 16th century.
At the time, the British labelled anything exotic as Turkish.
Turkish wheat (maize), Turkish cucumbers (pumpkins) and Turkish cocks (basically any foreign bird
but eventually exclusively North American turkeys).

(03:41):
It became fashionable among posh people to eat turkey at Christmas in Great Britain and
Ireland after Queen Victoria started having it for Christmas dinner in the mid-1840s.
By the 1940s, turkeys had become affordable enough for most people to follow suit.
In the meantime, domesticated turkeys had been repatriated to the Americas from Europe

(04:03):
and became the Thanksgiving ingredient of choice.
Mostly because they were a damn sight easier to kill than the native wild turkeys.
Each year, government bodies on both sides of the Atlantic warn against the dangers to
human health of not handling and cooking turkeys properly.
Yet, despite the high mortality rates among turkeys, there has never been a government

(04:28):
campaign to warn them of the dangers of being handled and cooked by humans.
Make of that what you will.