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Native to North America and domesticated long before the Spanish conquistadors hit land, turkey has become one of the most popular meats in the United States and remains a Thanksgiving Holiday icon. Along with the Slow Foods movement, food culture in America is shifting towards the production and intake of genetically unmodified and healthy food products, and turkey is no exception. In today’s grocery stores, Broad Breasted Bronze or the Large White industrial breed turkeys account for 99.9% of purchasable turkey. But before turkeys were crammed into pens or grown indoors, they roamed freely in forests and pastures. Ancestors of the popular supermarket turkey are “Heritage turkeys,” also called the “standard breed.” While raising
Heritage breeds costs more and is more time consuming, these costs incur for good reason. Heritage breeds include the Standard Bronze, Bourbon Red, Jersey Buff, Slate, Black Spanish, Narragansett, and White Holland. Not any bird can rise to the standards of the Heritage bird. It must be able to breed naturally (and not through artificial insemination) live seven to nine years, and grow slowly. When the modern Broad Breasted White was selected to breed in mass quantities, it was altered to produce meat quickly. The body shape was changed to encourage the development of meat. Yet, this created shorter breastbones and shorter legs than “normal” turkeys. Because of these changes, modern turkeys cannot mate naturally and they waddle around uncomfortably on their short legs, which struggle to support their imbalanced and heavy, skewed bodies.
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