Britain ‘could face national shortage’ of turkeys ahead of Christmas

Britain ‘could face national shortage’ of turkeys ahead of Christmas. The potential turkey crisis is expected to hit supermarket shelves worse than small British suppliers.

The Chairwoman of the Traditional Farm Fresh Turkey Association (TFTA), Kate Martin has explained that small British farms will be less harshly hit as they use local workers. Martin explained how supermarkets will be worse hit due to the lack of skilled European workers.

According to the TFTA, many poultry farms have already seen turkey orders rise to 5 times that seen last year.

Mrs Martin commented that: “This year it’s looking like there is a national shortage of turkeys when we’re talking about supermarket shelves, rather than buying direct from your farm.

“It is the supermarket shelves that will be emptier on turkeys this year than they have been before, only because there have been less turkeys placed on the ground, only because the big processers know that they will not get them processed.”

When quizzed on the possibility of running out of turkeys before Christmas Mrs Martin said: “I think everyone needs to get their orders in very quickly.

“We have seen an absolutely unprecedented number of orders come in.

“Come Christmas, if you leave ordering your turkey from your local farm supplier, you are going to be out of luck.”

Mrs Martin commented on the effects of Brexit and labour shortages and said: “We’re small producers, we use local labour, but for the big processors it is 100% caused by a labour shortage.

“This situation with turkeys is caused by the fact that European labour is no longer available to us, and they are skilled workers who have been coming to us for years.

“People are now missing a whole host of their workforce that they have been training and investing in over the last however many years, and those workers are no longer available for us to use on a seasonal basis – they will go find work on mainland Europe instead.”

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