The British public is beyond bovine.
Turkey farmers are reporting a surge in orders as families scramble to save Christmas dinner amid fears of a poultry shortage.
There have been unprecedented numbers of orders for turkey, with most high-end farms reporting soaring demand compared to this time last year.
This panic buying surge has seen some farms receive more than five times the number of orders as in 2020. Several farms are reporting 250 per cent surges compared to figures from this time last year.
As with toilet rolls and petrol, this is creating the shortages, not resolving them. And “saving Christmas.” Do me a favour. It’s just another day. Get over it. If you can’t get turkey, eat something else. You won’t die. Oh, and grow up, for crying out loud.
Poultry for Xmas dinner is a fairly recent development, traditionally it was wild boar. I suspect that the peasants had to make do with turnip. Why do people feel the need to be slaves to tradition? Sprouts are another mystery, most people don’t really like them, they are part of the Xmas dinner because they are a winter vegetable that was all that was available before we had freezers and air miles. A former colleague of mine takes his family out for a curry on Xmas day.
Sounds fair if he likes curry, why not? The last Christmas meal I shared with my late wife was beef Wellington. We made a point of not doing the tradition.
Thinking about this, could it be that the turkey industry has deliberately started a rumour that there is going to be a turkey shortage?
The pigs are behind it.
Oh, sorry occifer, did not see you there.
Seems unlikely there will be, in total, many more orders for turkey by December than usual – how many can any one family eat?. This is likely to be people getting their orders in early. Of course there will be those who haven’t yet made plans about who is visiting whom and might over-order in consequence, and people who order several from different places on the basis that at least one of them ought to deliver.
All that aside, though, there may yet be a real problem here. One hears there have been unusually bad harvests in North America (unusually good in India, mind you, so it does balance out to some extent) and there may therefore be a shortage of animal feed. That would tend towards shortages of all meat, not just turkey.
Thanks to all the covid nonsense, the world economy is not the smooth reliable machine it used to be. Hope everyone has some turnips in the garden …
Had an email from a friend about this ten days ago:
” about Turkeys. There has been a big run on them because no body to
pluck them etc. Can you look around your area and see if anyone does
free range or organic turkeys – Bronze, Norfolk Black etc – maybe
people don’t book up so far ahead where you are!”