The holiday season is supposed to be a time of peace and good will. But in reality, most “traditional” holiday celebrations involve torture and death for animals. Instead of filling your holiday plate with violence, LCA urges you to choose cruelty-free, plant-based options instead.

For Thanksgiving alone, an estimated 46 million turkeys are slaughtered in the United States each year; for Christmas, another 22 million are killed. Pigs, chickens cows, lambs, and other sentient beings also suffer on a massive scale to be served on holiday tables.

Virtually all of these animals are raised in crowded, disease-ridden factory farms that put profit over animal welfare.  Turkeys and chickens are raised to be so obese they cannot walk under their own weight. Mother pigs are housed in gestation crates too small to turn around in, and forced to breed over and over until their bodies are spent.

A Look at Factory Farm Animals

Pigs in cramped gestation crates on a factory farm.	A wounded pig trapped inside of a gestation crate.
Decapitated chickens hanging from a conveyer belt.	Chickens crowded into cages just before slaughter.

At slaughter time, turkeys are crammed together into small wire cages, piled onto trucks, and sent to slaughterhouses that kill the birds in brutal assembly-line style. The turkeys are shackled upside-down to a hanging conveyer belt while fully conscious and dipped into an electrified water bath before a mechanized blade cuts off their heads. The birds are then plunged into a scalding water tank. Many are scalded alive because the blade fails to decapitate them. (Chickens are killed using the same slaughter process.)

Even animals from small, so-called “humane” farms suffer greatly. For example, LCA’s undercover investigation of the Pel-Freez rabbit slaughterhouse revealed extreme cruelty: Workers hit the rabbits in the head with knives, flipped them upside-down, broke one leg to hang them from a hook, and decapitated them, all while many rabbits were fully conscious and screaming. These rabbits all came from small farms, and many were marketed as “humanely raised.”

Animals are smart, sensitive beings who don't deserve to be tortured for your plate. This year and every year -- have a cruelty free holiday!

What You Can Do:

1.   Choose delicious, plant-based alternatives for your holiday table. Almost all grocery stores carry vegan alternatives, many are available online.

2.   Make everyday cruelty free. Download LCA’s free Eat Cruelty-Free guide to get started.

3.   Spread the word! Educate your friends and family on the suffering behind animal products, and share on social media. The more people learn about the horrors of the animal industry, the more animals will be spared.