(Picture courtesy of Hanna Young with the National Turkey Federation)

"President Clinton, with his nephew Tyler, granted the annual turkey pardon yesterday at the White House. Nickolas Feidt, who raised the turkey, Stuart Proctor Jr. of the National Turkey Federation and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman watched." (The New York Times, November 23, 2000).

This year's turkey [a 24-week-old tom] is "Jerry." He is from Barron, WI -- the home of the NTF Chairman Jerry Jerome, CEO, The Turkey Store Company" (Sherrie Rosenblat, electronic mail, November 20, 2000).

Jerry Jerome, chairman of the National Turkey Federation, presented the turkey and later explained that actually, Jerry "'isn't a commercial turkey - he's a breeder tom, one of a very small minority ... a production bird, not an eating bird - he wouldn't have been slaughtered anyway.'

And there it was, the farce behind the farce.

Not only is a turkey being spared to mark a slaughter [by keeping one turkey off the Thanksgiving dinner table], the turkey being spared isn't being spared.

Slaughtergate!

A flustered Clinton spokesman, queried about the farce behind the farce, expressed doubt, saying that if this individual bird had never required a pardon, they certainly had no knowledge of it.

And, in damage-control mode, federation President Stuart Proctor, while conceding that the bird had been destined for life as a stud and would have survived Thanksgiving, insisted that Jerry eventually would have been turned into turkey sandwiches.

.....

[In the meantime,] Jamey Lee West, spokeswoman for the animal rights activist group United Poultry Concerns, which staged a small protest outside the White House grounds, also had serious thoughts on her mind.

UPC turkey Abigail says, "Don't Gobble Me!"

'This turkey will just serve to offset attention to what is wholesale mistreatment of these feeling creatures by this completely unregulated industry,' West said. 'He will probably not have been debeaked and detoed, like more than 90 percent of all other commercial turkeys are.'

Jerry's top beak did indeed show the tell-tale marks of clipping in infancy, which, the federation insisted, was done in a completely humane manner.

After the ceremony, the Presidential Turkey and his backup bird, 'Wallace,' the 'Vice Turkey,' were taken to live on a Herndon petting farm in an area bearing a name that serves as a constant reminder of their need to be grateful: Frying Pan Park.

Aside from the 45 million commercial turkeys, who are an increasingly popular year-round dish in America, Jerry beat out nine other handpicked breeder toms at Jerome's farm to score the cushy life.

But the joke is on him. The smug stud, it seems, will be going cold turkey before long at Frying Pan Park. Apparently, there are no hens at the farm" (Rowan Philp, The Washington Post, November 23, 2000).

"Farmers keep the males (toms) away from the females (hens), because females make the males more aggressive" (Talking Turkey, The Washington Post, November 23, 2000).

Last year's turkey, Harry, and his alternate Troy, were also taken to Kidwell Farm at Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Virginia.

Unfortunately, Harry [and Troy are] no longer with us (Sherrie Rosenblat, electronic mail, November 20, 2000).

In fact, the Reagan, Bush and Clinton turkeys "have joined the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter turkeys dating back to the inaugural 1947 White House turkey ceremony, [Sherrie Rosenblatt] says.

'They are in Turkey Heaven,' Rosenblatt confided. How can this be? How can all of them be dead, so soon, before they qualified for Social Security and experienced the special jobs of opening presidential libraries and gobbling $25,000 speeches to trade associations?

Who, or what, offed the presidential turkeys?

It turns out that a presidential pardon doesn't buy much time. These birds have already been condemned to live fast, die young and leave a tasty corpse.

Except sometimes they get assassinated.

Ever since the first Beltsville White gobbled for scientists at the federal Agricultural Research Service almost 50 years ago, the turkey industry has found ways to breed ever faster-growing animals with rippling thighs and breasts ready for eating within a few months of birth. Hens can grow to 16 pounds in 16 weeks, toms 25 pounds in 18 weeks. Presidential toms tend to be over 50 pounds and more than six months old.

'They are all like Arnold Schwarzenegger-type birds,' said JeanPierre Vaillancourt, associate professor of poultry health management at North Carolina State University.

But the birds' frames have trouble carrying the added weight. They walk with difficulty and cannot fly.

'Their cardiovascular system has not followed the same evolution as their muscle mass,' Vaillancourt said.

Kept alive past slaughter time, they may soon develop heart lung and joint problems.

Given these handicaps, how long can a turkey live?There is not much academic literature on the natural life span of domestic turkeys. What would be the point?

None ever lasts that long, with the notable exception of two toms each year.

Vaillancourt guesses a tom could live 18 months, no problem; 3 years would be 'a very old turkey.'

The presidential turkeys pardoned last November never saw their 18th month. The second one keeled over by summer's end.

'You always have to explain what happened to the presidential turkeys,' sighed Todd Brown, the obscure but powerful man who holds the fate of the presidential turkeys in his calloused hands. 'It'd be nice to be able to say, 'There's the Reagans, there's the Bush turkeys.''

Brown, a compact man in a baseball cap, grew up in a farming family and took over the farming operations at Frying Pan Park in 1991. He calls himself Farmer Brown. The park is a unit of the Fairfax County Park Authority and attracts 200,000 visitors a year. Subdivisions lap at the edges of the 100 acres, while the occasional Dulles airplane roars overhead.

Brown has a spin for inquisitive kids: The presidential turkeys may be dead, but they lived longer than every other turkey of their generation.

In 1988, a Reagan Turkey was stolen from a previous retirement village in McLean. The culprit was never apprehended.

In 1993, a dog broke into the presidential suite at Frying Pan Park and dined on two Bushes and a Quayle. The assassin escaped. 'There were feathers everywhere,' a farmhand said at the time.

One of the early Clinton birds got sick and was lying on its side in pain. Farmer Brown summoned a veterinarian, who put the turkey to sleep with an injection.

But for the most part, Presidential Turkey retirement seems pleasant, if brief. The National Turkey Federation financed construction of the barn, the taxpayers of Fairfax County cover the cost of food. A pair of presidential turkeys eats about $150 in turkey food -- two handfulls a day of beige pellets containing corn, soybean meal, vitamins and minerals - a year, along with assorted lettuce, cabbage, bread and water.

'It's kind of sad to say, but like an older person, they don't eat very much,' Farmer Brown said. 'They're not growing anymore.'

'The death of a presidential turkey is attended by less ceremony than the pardoning.

Farmer Brown and one or two farmhands take the fallen gobbler out to the edge of a cornfield, where some juniper trees grow. 'I try to pick a peaceful place,' he said. They dig a hole four or five feet deep and inter the bird. They cover the grave and leave no marker.

And that is that.

Farmer Brown pointed out the Presidential Turkey Arlington Cemetery on the condition that its exact location not be revealed. He doesn't want people making weird pilgrimages, leaving offerings of cranberries and gravy, and graffiti assertions that 'Tom Lives'" (David Montgomery, The Washington Post, November 24, 2000).

As for the origin of the Turkey pardon, archivist for the Harry S. Truman Library Dennis E. Bilger writes,

"The origin of this turkey pardon is an Associated Press article that appeared in the Kansas City Star on November 23, 1995. We have searched our files but we can find no information to confirm this story. For some reason the Clinton White House believes this story to be true and President Clinton has pardon several turkeys, but we can find no evidence that President Truman actually pardoned a turkey in 1947 as indicated by this AP story. I hope this information is helpful. I would not advise you to include this unsubstantiated story on the web" (Dennis E. Bilger, electronic mail, November 27, 2000).

According to Public Information Officer Merni Fitzgerald, Fairfax County Park Authority "records show that we first received the pardoned turkeys in 1989. They were previously given to Evans Farm Inn, referred to [above] as the "retirement village in McLean." We do not mark the graves of the turkeys. We have been told by the National Turkey Federation, and numerous newspaper articles concur, that the first ceremony was in 1947. But keep in mind, that is not our ceremony, it has been done by the National Turkey Federation in conjunction with the White House. So we are not the authority on the ceremony's history. In fact, since the Park Authority was created in 1950, this agency didn't exist then. Good luck on your research" (electronic mail, November 29, 2000).

To which Turkey Federation Public Relations Assistant Hanna Young has responded, "For this information you will want to contact the White House Press Office" (Hana Young, electronic mail, November 29, 2000).

Stay tuned for more to come.