Peta: Tessa

PETA UK’s entry to the Christmas advert season features Absolutely Fabulous and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget star Jane Horrocks as the voice of Tessa, a jolly young turkey who sings and marvels at many of today’s Christmas customs, like The Elf on the Shelf. But the spot, created in collaboration with House 337, takes a dark turn when Tessa finds herself seized and sent to an abattoir – the fate that awaits most turkeys in real life – where she questions how killing sensitive animals for the Christmas table can have a place in today’s world. The spot ends with a simple appeal to kill the tradition, not the turkey, and a call for viewers to try a vegan meal instead. Misguided holiday customs spell torment and a horrific death for many animals. Approximately 4.5 million turkeys are killed for Christmas dinner each year in Australia alone. In nature, turkeys are protective parents and spirited explorers who can live up to 10 years, but those killed for their flesh are crammed into filthy sheds – which are breeding grounds for diseases such as the ongoing bird flu epidemic – before being slaughtered at just 12 to 26 weeks of age. The young birds are often hung from metal shackles by their feet and dragged through an electrified bath that can cause full-body tremors. Some are still conscious when their throats are slit or as they’re placed into scalding-hot water to remove their feathers. PETA offers a guide to meatless Christmas roasts and a free vegan starter kit. The organisation – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.au or follow the group on Facebook and Instagram.