http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2013/1...-weirdness-of-the-presidential-turkey-pardon/ Looks like a cruel joke to me. Ritual of some sort.
I was thinking the same thing! Aside from the fact that heritage breeds are absolutely gorgeous birds, it would be nice for the bird to have a life or become a breeder. I'll assume that for the event they just take a turkey from the nearest production facility and they use it.
I heard an NPR story on this. They are pardoned. But the interesting thing is that the farmer raising the turkey has to train it to stand still on a table in front of a bunch of noisy press and cameras. The guy from North Dakota this year trained them by putting them on a table and having classrooms of elementary kids march in. Pretty fun story. Anyway, I agree that a nice red bronze Tom would make a better show for people that know the difference, but the truth is no one knows the difference and no one really cares about heritage turkeys any more. Except us
After thinking about this for a while I came to a conclusion. Why does a turkey need to be pardoned in the first place? What evil thing did it do that a pardon is required? So here it goes. A heritage turkey is a natural god created animal. It does not need a pardon for it is part of the kingdom by nature. It has domicile rights by birth. A BBB is a man made creation. Created for profit which has many bad side effects to the animals health. (cripples easy, super short life, etc) It has no domicile rights by birth. It is property by creation. So are they pardoning mans creations (in general) and not the animal itself? It would seem so.
