Plenty of turkey for Brits this Christmas despite bird flu

Dec 10 2007

Brits will still be alright for their Christmas turkey this year despite the bird flu outbreaks.

According to a new report in the trade magazine The Grocer concerns that the last outbreak in November in particular, would adversely affect the Christmas turkey trade are beginning to recede.

There had been widespread concern that the cull of thousands of birds in Suffolk would result in major shortages over the Christmas period but that availability apparently centred on fresh rather than frozen birds that were stored before the outbreak.

The magazine reports that turkey producers and retailers have had stable and to some extent, increased sales as families bought earlier than usual to ensure they had their Christmas turkey.

Retailers say more people are buying their turkeys early and experts believe that the public has to a degree become immune to food scares in a year that has seen outbreaks of foot and mouth, bluetongue and bird flu in Britain.

The British Poultry Council says there is no problem in sourcing the 10 million turkeys which will be eaten by the public this Christmas and even though the price of a turkey has risen by as much as 20 per cent this year industry experts say the increase has nothing to do with bird flu but rather to the 200 per cent increase in feed costs in the last two years.

The 3km bird flu protection zone has now been lifted at Redgrave Park farm, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, following the November outbreak of the disease there along with the protection zone, around a second farm nearby.

The wider surveillance and restriction zones imposed following the outbreak are due to be lifted on the 19th of December but for the time being other restrictions on bird gatherings and movements of poultry and poultry meat remain in place.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has still been unable to confirm the source of the outbreak but has not ruled out wild birds as the cause.

To date millions of birds worldwide have either died from the H5N1 strain or been culled to prevent the spread of the disease.