The turkey industry needs a national voice to help safeguard the future of British production, according to Paul Kelly, managing director of FarmGate Hatcheries which supplies around half of the poults reared for Christmas.
“The British turkey market has declined dramatically from a peak of 46 million birds in 1996 to 13 million today, primarily attributed to the influx of cheap, intensively reared imports. Many of these would not meet the welfare standards required in this country.
“The turkey industry used to have big funds to promote itself when the large turkey companies were thriving and making money,” said Kelly in his seasonal newsletter to poult customers. “Things are very different now. There is no money available any more.
“As a whole, turkey farmers have strength in numbers but we are not pulling together to fund a national generic campaign to support the ‘Great British Turkey’ from your British farm.”
As an initial move he is urging farmers to you to join the Anglian Turkey Association or if a member of the NFU, to get involved in its turkey meetings.
Looking back to last year, Kelly said Christmas turned out to be better year than most people had predicted. “The cost-of-living crisis was playing on everyone’s mind, but actually it did not seem to impact sales of turkeys. Our own retail sales did see a reduction in whole birds but a shift of 8% into crowns and joints as these are at lower price points.”
He is looking at the potential to offer smaller turkeys at Christmas, which sold well in 2002 when avian flu forced the industry to process birds earlier.
“These were not available in 2023, so entry price points for the whole bird were considerably higher. We do sell out of the few two to three kilo turkeys we have every year. So how do we make small turkeys profitable? That’s something we’re working on,” he said.