Big Turkey versus Old Turkey

Green Becoming

Part of an on-going series on Sustainable Agriculture
by J. Michael Wheeler

Heritage on the Table
Benjamin Franklin wanted the indigenous wild turkey to be America’s national bird rather than the eagle (the eagle was already used by many European nations). Ben didn’t get his way, but the turkey does hold an honored place in the American psyche, at least on Thanksgiving Day. On that day, we Americans pop more than 46 million Butterballs into the oven and gather around the table for one of our most cherished meals, celebrating the Pilgrims’ survival of their first winter in the new world. Of course, a supermarket Butterball ain’t the turkey the pilgrims ate.

The Broad-Breasted White, the commercially raised hybrid that overfills our supermarket meat counters, has, well, a broad breast with lots of white meat. It’s been bred, like our commercial chickens, to provide lots of white breast meat (which the American market prefers) and less dark thigh and leg meat (which the European market prefers). In fact the Broad-Breasted White is so top heavy that it can’t mate naturally, and even has trouble walking (try balancing a slice of pumpkin pie on its point and you get the idea).

The smarts have been bred out of them too. My father lived in the Mojave Desert, in California, and there were big turkey farms out there. When the infrequent, but torrential storms would appear, the birds were literally too dumb to come out of the rain: they would stare up into the sky and their mouths would open and then their throats fill with water. If the farmers didn’t herd them into the sheds, they would stand like that until they drowned.

Of course Butterballs never roamed free, but the Broad-Breasted White isn’t the bird our great-grandparents ate. Heritage turkeys like the American Bronze and the Narragansett graced their tables. Wish you could taste the difference between a Broad-Breasted White and a Bourbon Red? Well now it’s possible.

Heritage Foods USA was started in 2001 by two Slow Food USA members, Patrick Martins, then the head of Slow Food USA, and Todd Wickstrom. It is dedicated to helping farmers market their artisan foods and to provide an alternative to industrial agriculture. And they set out to bring back the old heritage turkeys. In 2002, they sold just 800 birds. This year they should sell tens of thousands.

Their website tells us:

True Heritage Turkey is a product that represents one of the greatest conservation stories in the United States. Once critically endangered, varieties like the American Bronze and Bourbon Red turkeys have now been upgraded to more secure population sizes thanks to increased demand.

The Heritage Turkey Project, which helped double the population of heritage turkeys in the United States and upgraded the Bourbon Red turkey from "rare" to "watch" status on conservation lists, was Heritage Foods USA's first foray into saving American food traditions. In 2004 it became an independent company dedicated to saving not only turkeys but also Native American foods, pigs, sheep, bison, cows, reef-net salmon, chickens and all breeds of food livestock.

Heritage Foods USA heritagefoodsusa.com
Slow Foods, USA SlowFoodUSA.org
Photo by Mike Piazza for Heritage Foods USA. Used by permission.

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