Shopping for turkey? Get in quick before they’re all gobbled up

Shopping for turkey? Get in quick before they’re all gobbled up

Farmers struggle to meet demand as festive season leads to 400% price rise.

The government ban on US turkey imports has left Thai farmers struggling to meet local demand and customers facing a four-fold price hike ahead of the festive season.

With Thanksgiving coming up this week and Christmas only a month away, many turkey lovers are in a flap as they struggle to find birds at a reasonable price.

For the Benjaponsiri Turkey Farm, it is the first time in their 34-year history that their stock of breeding turkeys is less than 1,000. The Nong Bua Lam Phu farm usually keeps at least 3,000 breeding turkeys in stock, which they sell to farmers.

Apart from farms, Benjaponsiri has also had requests from desperate supermarkets and individual customers for frozen turkeys, said farm manager Theerprach Suwanseree.

Farms in the northeast, the largest producers of turkeys, are unable to meet the sudden rise in demand as restaurants, hotels and consumers are rushing to stock turkeys ahead of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Benjaponsiri only supplies to its own restaurant, but many farms sell directly to hotels — with each of them gobbling up hundreds of kilogrammes of turkey meat a month.

Thailand has banned poultry imports from the US since January, due to the detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza. The US National Turkey Federation said the avian flu has wiped out 7.5 million turkeys since late January, resulting in economic losses of nearly 18 billion baht for turkey farmers there.

Turkey prices in the US have risen about 15-20%, but Thai customers are facing a four-fold price hike. While live turkeys are sold at 150-200 baht per kg, prices at supermarkets range from 590 baht to 1,000 baht, compared with 200-250 baht per kg before the shortage — a 400% increase.

Commenting on the high price at his local supermarket, one poster on the website Thaivisa said: “If that’s the price, so be it, but in that instance we will not be having turkey for Thanksgiving or Christmas this year.”

Another poster claiming to have a turkey farm said he had already sold out and many of the free-range birds he was searching for “are too skinny”.

A five-star hotel on Sukhumvit Road said they are able to secure “just enough” turkeys to carry through the festive season. The turkeys were sourced from the US through a supplier before Thailand’s ban on poultry imports came into effect.

“Suppliers are prepared to pay the price or else they would have to pay a fine for not being able to secure the produce under existing contracts,” said Mr Theerprach, adding that current prices are a historical high.

A chef at Italian restaurant Mamma Mia Salaya said it is now difficult or even impossible to find turkeys at a normal price.

“We are in a better position as we bought four large birds back in June-July from a supplier who had some old stock, so we are OK for our Thanksgiving dinner,” he said.

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