Student totes live turkey to promote local farming

It’s 3 a.m. — do you know where your turkey is?

Gael Whettnall does. He bought his own.

On Tuesday, the UNM student carried a live turkey around campus from noon to 1 p.m. to make the point that most of us don’t know where our food comes from. He said he was met with all positive responses.

“The ideal image of a turkey on a small farm with some grass, pecking away, isn’t the reality for a lot of these large-scale turkey farms,” Whettnall said. “As long as the turkeys have access to the outdoors, or if it’s an open-air environment, then the turkey can be labeled ‘free-range.’”

Although there isn’t a big enough local turkey market to support everyone in Albuquerque, Whettnall still wants people to think about the benefits of knowing where their food comes from, buying locally to growing and raising their own food.
“It’s not necessarily cheaper, but the added benefit is you know the life your turkey had,” he said. “If my turkey eats 100 pounds of grain to become a 30-pound turkey, he puts a lot of manure back into my garden.”

Whettnall said Los Poblanos farm raises a few hundred organic turkeys each year.
“By the time I called them they had already sold all their turkeys,” he said. “I was lucky enough to get the one.”

Student Kelly Williamson walked around with Whettnall and the turkey on campus Tuesday afternoon. She said this display was part of the Slow Food movement, which aims to preserve the food, plants and seeds, domestic animals and farming within an eco-region.

“He’s either going to kill it tomorrow or the next day and have a home-cooked meal with his family,” she said. “He’s going to kill it himself. He’s never done it before. He’s going to gut it, clean it.”

Sounds like the turkey had a mixed, farewell-to-the-world time Tuesday.

“This turkey was completely friendly but also completely terrified because it wasn’t his natural environment, and I feel bad for the turkey in that way,” Whettnall said. “But it was an important point. I was carrying him around underneath my arm right at head level. People were coming up and petting him.”