On Saturday, 20th December 2025, the bustling South Bank in front of London’s National Theatre became the stage for a provocative installation that forced Christmas revellers to confront an uncomfortable truth. WTF Speciesism, a global art movement, performed their ‘Turkey Is Not Humane‘ installation to challenge the hypocrisy of celebrating peace and goodwill whilst slaughtering millions of sentient beings.

Art Meets Activism on the South Bank

Between 3pm and 5pm, the festive atmosphere was interrupted by an installation by Stephanie Lane, depicting humans in the positions we force animals into. At the centre of the display, volunteers lay nearly naked on a table, embodying the turkeys that would grace dinner tables across the nation just days later. The installation, also performed simultaneously in Glasgow and previously in New York for Thanksgiving, uses visceral imagery to challenge our moral blindness.

Between 30 and 40 activists participated in the London event, including six ‘diners,’ a ‘farmer’ reading an ironic speech justifying animal exploitation, and human ‘turkeys’ who rotated positions due to the freezing December cold. Outreach volunteers engaged passers-by not with confrontation but with questions – ‘What do you think of this artwork?‘

The approach proved remarkably effective. According to organisers, the response was ‘unanimously positive.’ Most people stopped, looked and acknowledged the hypocrisy. Near the installation, a turkey leg vendor unwittingly validated the activists’ message, telling customers his meat came from ‘his friend’s farm’ where ‘only a few turkeys’ were kept—the comforting fiction that allows us to consume without confronting the reality.

The Christmas Massacre – 100 Million Lives Cut Short

Over 100 million turkeys will be killed globally during the Christmas period alone. In the United States, approximately 22 million turkeys are slaughtered for Christmas dinner, whilst 46 million meet their fate at Thanksgiving. Globally, more than 620 million turkeys are killed annually—more than 1.6 million every single day. These aren’t abstract statistics – they represent individual lives, each one capable of feeling, thinking, and with a desire to live.

The vast majority—98 percent—of these turkeys endure the hell of factory farming. They are crammed into filthy, windowless sheds holding up to 25,000 birds. The lighting is deliberately dimmed to prevent the aggression that inevitably erupts when intelligent, active birds are denied everything that makes life worth living – fresh air, sunlight, the ability to explore, forage, build nests, or raise their young.

Through genetic manipulation, modern turkeys have been bred to grow grotesquely fast and large—four times the size of their wild ancestors. Today’s factory-farmed turkey can weigh nearly 40 pounds at just four months old, when they are sent to slaughter. Wild turkeys can live up to ten years – farmed turkeys are killed before they’ve barely begun to live.

This unnatural growth causes immense suffering. Many turkeys become crippled under their own weight, unable to walk or even stand. Their legs snap. Their hearts give out. Millions die from ‘starve-out,’ a stress-induced condition where young birds simply stop eating. Those who survive to slaughter age face brutal treatment – workers have been documented kicking, stomping, and throwing birds, using them as ‘punching bags,’ and breaking their necks for ‘fun.’

At the slaughterhouse, turkeys are hung upside down by their already damaged legs. Their heads are dragged through electrified water meant to stun them, but many birds dodge the tank and remain fully conscious as their throats are slit. If the blade misses, they are boiled alive in the scalding tank used for feather removal. This is the ‘humane‘ treatment we celebrate with crackers and carol singing.

Sentience, Intelligence, and the Capacity to Suffer

The industrial meat lobby has worked hard to convince us that turkeys are stupid, unfeeling creatures unworthy of moral consideration. The scientific evidence tells a very different story. Turkeys possess marked intelligence and complex social relationships. They communicate through both visual displays and a sophisticated vocal repertoire. They remember human faces and will choose favourite people, frequently greeting them on sight.

Poultry scientist Tom Savage of Oregon State University notes that if you throw an apple to a group of turkeys, they will play with it together. Erik Marcus, author of Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, observed that turkeys remember your face and sit closer to you with each visit, deliberately choosing certain people as favourites. They are not mindless automatons but conscious beings with preferences, personalities and the capacity for joy.

Most profoundly, turkeys demonstrate remarkable emotional intelligence and empathy. When a turkey suffers a heart attack on a factory farm, other birds have been seen to surround their dying companion and sometimes die themselves from the trauma of witnessing such suffering. Historical accounts describe wild turkeys holding ‘great wakes’ over fallen companions, refusing to flee even when shots ring out. This is not stupidity—it is compassion, loyalty and grief.

Like humans, turkeys experience fear, anxiety, frustration, boredom, pleasure and joy. Their nervous systems are similar to mammals, meaning they feel physical pain just as acutely as dogs, cats, or humans. Dr Ian Duncan, a poultry specialist, confirms that turkeys experience a wide range of emotions and form deep social bonds. The late Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns has documented turkeys demonstrating overwhelming displays of concern and emotion for injured or dying birds—behaviour that speaks to a rich and complex  inner life.

The Hypocrisy of a ‘Humane’ Christmas

Christmas is meant to be a celebration of love, compassion, kindness, and peace on earth. We sing carols about goodwill to all. We exchange gifts. We gather with loved ones. And at the centre of it all, we place the corpse of a baby bird who wanted to live.

The cognitive dissonance is staggering. We claim to love animals whilst funding industries that torture them. We preach compassion whilst celebrating violence. We teach children to be kind whilst normalising cruelty. As one WTF Speciesism organiser noted, ‘We are celebrating the birth of a baby by killing a baby.’ The irony would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.

But plant-based alternatives continue to gain ground, offering consumers the opportunity to align their actions with their values. Brands like THIS, which creates hyper-realistic plant-based chicken and bacon from peas and soya beans, are making it easier than ever to celebrate without slaughter. Meanwhile, initiatives like vegan butcher shops—from Rudy’s in London to The Herbivorous Butcher in the United States—demonstrate that we can have the traditions and tastes we love without the violence.

The WTF Speciesism installation succeeded because it destabilised people’s comfortable narratives. It forced them to see what they normally ignore – that the turkey on their table was a living, feeling being who fought for their life, who suffered in confinement, who died in terror.

Nobody wants to be seen as evil or merciless, which is why we cling to myths about ‘humane’ slaughter, ‘happy’ farms, and turkeys who ‘wouldn’t exist’ without us breeding them for consumption. But these are just stories we tell ourselves to avoid confronting a simple truth – we are killing sentient beings who want to live because we invented a tradition that required sacrifice, and now we lack the moral courage to challenge the horror and hypocrisy of our behaviour.

The season of goodwill demands better. Christmas celebrates birth, not death. It honours life, not slaughter. It calls us to extend our circle of compassion, not to restrict it to our own species. As the activists on the South Bank demonstrated, the only honest way to celebrate love and peace is to choose kindness over violence, mercy over murder, life over death.

This Christmas, 100 million turkeys will die. We can choose to see turkeys not as food, but as the intelligent, emotional, sentient beings they truly are. We can choose to let them live. That would be a Christmas miracle worth celebrating.

 —  © 2025 Sul Nowroz  –  Real Media staff writer  –  Insta: @TheAfghanWriter