Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 25, 1993 TAG: 9311260019
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-16 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: GUY GUGLIOTTA THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"I deduced a long time ago that stupidity isn't the problem," Sexton said. "The turkey just doesn't give a damn."
About what? Nuclear proliferation? World trade? The Redskins?
"No, they just don't give a damn about anything," Sexton said.
This is, of course, a mistake, as the birds discover every year about this time. Yesterday's vagabond je ne sais quoi earns them nothing this week except a one-way ticket to Thanksgiving dinner.
Sexton, director of the Livestock and Poultry Sciences Institute for the Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Md., is another example of that Washington truism: If it's alive and it ain't human, then USDA has an expert in it.
Actually, two of them. Besides Sexton, who is mostly an administrator these days, USDA also has Murray Bakst, a research physiologist who has been studying turkeys for 18 years.
Sexton is sort of folksy. Bakst, on the other hand, was raised near Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, and saw his first live bird (other than pigeons) the day a poultry truck overturned in the neighborhood.
But that's another story.
Bakst pointed out that it is not surprising that USDA studies turkeys. The National Turkey Federation says Americans plan to eat 285,350,000 of them this year, either whole (about 30 percent) or as sliced turkey breast, turkey lasagna, turkey burgers, turkey franks, turkey subs, turkey hash, turkey this and turkey that.
Americans' annual per capita turkey consumption has leveled off at 18 pounds, the federation says, after doubling during the last 20 years. That's three-quarters of a holiday-sized bird apiece, a ringing testimony to the turkey's niche as one of the great success stories in food history.
From obscure origins as the barnyard favorite of indigenous Mexican peoples, the turkey took kitchens by storm.
Sexton and Bakst are not turkey historians, but books suggest that turkeys acquired their dumb-jock reputation through unseemly comparison to their two Old World cousins - the pheasant and the peacock.
Medieval Europeans had been shooting arrows at pheasants for years with limited success, because pheasants were smart enough to leave the scene whenever somebody like Frank Perdue walked up to them and took aim. Peacocks, brought from Asia by travelers, were less flighty, because they could be tamed and used as watchdogs (they make a horrible screeching noise) before being dispatched in time for Christmas dinner.
But then along came the Age of Discovery and the arrival of turkeys, who were too cool to take the pheasants' way out and too ugly to compete with peacocks as pets. The rest is culinary history.
Bakst said today's commercial turkeys bear scant resemblance to the gray and brown "bronze" ones the Indians handed out to the Pilgrim fathers or those featured on certain bourbon bottles. Instead, today's turkeys are white, because white turkeys grow faster and produce more white meat.
Sexton got into turkey research because only three major companies produce breeding stock. Through careful work, he said, "progress has been made" in ensuring that there are no morons among turkeys, just the big white dudes with the huge pecs.
So, Dr. Sexton, I guess it's not true that turkeys are so stupid they choke to death trying to drink rain? "Ah, that's a myth I've heard a thousand times," Sexton said. "Turkeys are very intelligent animals."
But, added Bakst, "on a scale of one to 10, they don't compare to pigs."
Intelligent, perhaps, but definitely not brilliant.
by CNB