UK consumers hopeful of having traditional turkey roasts this Christmas have been warned of a 'big, big shortage' of free range birds - with half already dead due to the ongoing rise in avian flu.
Bosses in the industry revealed that in the region of 600,000 of the some 1.2million free range Christmas turkeys set to be sold have already either died or been culled due to the rapidly spreading disease.
It is also said that around one million of the 8.5 to 9million festive birds in total have suffered the same fate.
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The PA News Agency reports that during a hearing at the Commons, British Poultry Council Chief Executive Richard Griffiths described the problem as 'huge'. He said: “The usual amount of free range birds grown for Christmas is around 1.2 to 1.3 million.
"We have seen around 600,000 of those free range birds being directly affected.” When asked what this might mean for retail prices as the highly-celebrate festive season soon approaches, he admitted: "I don’t know.
"That’s really a question for retailers. We don’t know how the gaps within retail are going to be filled at this point.”
He then went on to tell the committee that some 1.6million birds have been culled completely as of November 20, directly due to bird flu on farms across the UK. He also noted that around 36 per cent of poultry farms have been affected by the disastrous outbreak.
Poulty farmer Paul Kelly also spoke of a 'big, big shortage' in terms of free range turkeys this year. He said: “I don’t think UK turkey prices will be going up. I think it will just be a supply issue rather than the prices being hiked.
“But there will be a big, big shortage of British free range turkeys on the shelves this year.”
He also added that the outbreak of avian flu - which is the worst in UK history - has been 'devastating'. He added: "The challenge for a lot of the smaller seasonal producers that produce Christmas poultry is they have their Christmas flock on their farm and when the turkeys are infected they all die within four days.
“To give you an example, we had one farmer with 9,500 (birds). The first infection was on Thursday evening, 20 mortality, and by Monday lunchtime they were all dead.”
He continued: "We’re a small business and we’ve lost £1.2 million this year – just turkeys that have died. Luckily we’re going to get through to next year but … can we take the risk to grow Christmas poultry based on what we’ve seen this year? We couldn’t.
"And had I known what I know now we would not have grown the turkeys we did. Looking to next year, I don’t want to put the farm at risk. Without a vaccine in place or a compensation scheme that is fit for purpose, I don’t know whether we’d have the confidence to grow Christmas poultry next year.”
Mr Griffiths, added: “This year the seasonal producers have been so badly affected. I can see many of those taking a good hard look at whether they want to be in Christmas poultry.”
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