During her family’s Thanksgiving dinners, freshman Janie Davis recalls scanning the table and seeing all of their traditional thanksgiving dishes, including of course the Tofurkey.

Davis and her family are vegetarians for moral reasons, and pass up the traditional Thanksgiving turkey in their holiday feast, often in favor of extra helpings of side dishes.

“I’ve been asked that before: ‘Do you celebrate Thanksgiving? What do you guys do?’ and stuff like that,” Davis said. “Really we aren’t that much different than most families. We just skip on the turkey, the side dishes are the good stuff I think anyway.”

Davis and her family cringe at the thought of the bird abuse that millions of turkeys go through on a yearly basis just for this one meal, so the Davis family boycotted it when Davis was a young child.

Davis sited how the birds are treated while being fattened up all year just for the one day. She said they are shoved in “way too small” of cages, kicked around, thrown around and slung around by their necks, just to commemorate a tradition that is inaccurate. She said the original Thanksgiving was about the feast and “togetherness,” not all about cooking and eating a certain bird.

When they originally began having the holiday feast without turkey, Davis recalls her parents substituting the meat with Tofurkey, a soy-based product that boasts a turkey-like texture and flavor.

“It was so disgusting,” Davis said. “I remember as a little kid almost crying it was so gross. Needless to say, Tofurkey never made an appearance at the table again.”

Davis doesn’t feel like she is missing out on a turkey day tradition by boycotting the meat.

“It’s all about the delicious cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and stuffing – vegetarian of course,” Davis said.