This Thanksgiving will be unlike any other: smaller gatherings, empty airports, celebrations with family and friends over Zoom. Many of us feel grateful just to have made it through the year healthy, while others will have an empty chair at their Thanksgiving table. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s the importance of empathy and that our choices impact the lives of others. We’ve given up a lot of things we love this year out of consideration for others. We should also give up eating turkey.

I know what you’re thinking: “Haven’t we given up enough already? Can’t I just enjoy an important annual tradition in peace?” You’re right that we all deserve a holiday season filled with compassion and self-care, but if we can celebrate without causing additional suffering, why wouldn’t we? If the fact that 46 million living, feeling animals are brutally raised and killed for the holiday by a violent industry that puts profit over humane consideration hasn’t been enough to deter you in past years, please consider the following reasons why this year, more than ever before, you should leave the turkey off your plate.

As we make holiday plans during the coronavirus pandemic, we should remember how slaughterhouses emerged as COVID-19 hotspots, and how “essential workers,” disproportionately people of color, have faced elevated risks from COVID-19 and other threats.

I feel badly for turkeys and other innocent animals who are exploited for food, and I also feel badly for people caught up in this abusive system. Can you imagine working in a slaughterhouse? It is a perilous and stressful job and requires a callousness that undermines our empathy. If we buy turkeys or other factory-farmed foods, we unwittingly support an unhealthy, unjust and inhumane agricultural system. By reducing demand for animal products and supporting plant-based agriculture, instead we can create jobs that don’t require killing.

But that’s not the only reason to forego turkey. The intensive crowding of industrial poultry farming creates a breeding ground for zoonotic diseases, and has been linked to previous epidemics, including avian flu. Animal agriculture also puts us at risk of fecal pathogens, including antibiotic-resistant superbugs. The Center for Disease Control warns consumers to keep raw poultry away from kitchen surfaces where it can contaminate other foods and to wash our hands if we touch it to limit the spread of germs.

The best and most direct way to avoid these risks and to prevent the untold suffering of humans and other animals is to eat plants instead of animal products.

The reasons mount. Animal agriculture is a leading contributor to global warming and the destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity. It puts enormous strain on natural resources such as land, water, and fossil fuel, and is responsible for nearly 15% of greenhouse gases. That’s about the same as all the earth’s planes, trains and automobiles combined, Climate Nexus has pointed out.

But to me, the most compelling reason is the basic moral fact that eating turkey harms millions of living, sentient creatures.

To maximize profits, the poultry industry has engineered turkeys to grow much faster and larger than normal, causing the birds to experience chronic health problems like cardiovascular disease and impaired mobility. In fact, commercial turkeys are so profoundly misshapen that they can no longer reproduce naturally, and are all products of artificial insemination. The twist this year is that since Thanksgiving gatherings will be smaller, there is increased demand for smaller turkeys. And with no way to go back in time and alter a production process that began months ago, the industry is responding by cutting the turkeys’ lives short to prevent them from growing as big as they were engineered to grow.

So instead of eating a young turkey (most birds are slaughtered between the ages of 14 and 16 weeks), this year, you will likely be eating an even younger turkey (slaughtered around 13 or 14 weeks). Neither option elicits much holiday cheer.

At Farm Sanctuary we take care of turkeys and other animals rescued from the abuses of industrial animal agriculture, and every year we host Thanksgiving celebrations for the turkeys. We feed the birds and treat them as guests of honor. Watching wide-eyed children interacting with turkeys, serving them squash, cranberries and other traditional holiday foods, brings smiles to everyone’s faces. The shared joy is palpable. Being kind is good for animals and humans alike, while cruelty hurts us all.

We can prevent the enormous harm that factory farming causes people and other animals by making more conscious food choices, and thankfully, that’s becoming easier than ever. In addition to a growing variety of plant-based alternatives to animal foods, there is also a long list of traditional Thanksgiving foods like mashed potatoes, green beans and pumpkin pie that have always been plant-based.

Brené Brown once observed that “Empathy is not finite, and compassion is not a pizza with eight slices. When you practice empathy and compassion with someone, there is not less of these qualities to go around. There’s more.” This Thanksgiving, by widening our circle of compassion to include one of the most abused creatures on the planet, we can each practice kindness and generosity, which are so desperately needed, and especially this year.

Baur is president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, America’s first farm animal sanctuary and advocacy organization.