Sky-high inflation and a persistent outbreak of the viral avian flu is driving up the costs to produce turkey this year while threatening the supply.
Sky-high inflation and a persistent outbreak of the viral avian flu is driving up the costs to produce turkey this year while threatening the supplyn Meeker County, Minnesota, at the end of August, 180,000 turkeys infected with avian flu had to be killed.
This year, the flu has killed 44 million birds, including 4.5 million turkeys, or 2.5% of U.S. turkey production. Coupled with the highest inflation in 40 years, which has hit the meat case at double the rate of other consumer products due to higher feed prices and more expensive fuel, analysts predict Thanksgiving will cost more this year because of the flu-diminished turkey supply.
Meat has been one of the categories “most severely impacted by inflation,” said Carman Allison, a vice president at NielsenIQ. In the last year, meat prices are up an average of 12%, while turkey prices have increased even more—14%. The main reason is geography. Jennie-O has been hit harder than Butterball partly because most of Jennie-O’s production is based in Minnesota, which is in the middle of a wild bird migratory fly zone. That’s been fueling the spread. Butterball, however, mostly draws its turkeys from the South, with farms mostly in North Carolina and a few sprinkled throughout Missouri and Arkansas.
The 44 million birds killed by flu this year is fast approaching the record set in 2015, when 50 million birds were killed in the largest U.S. avian flu outbreak ever recorded. Back then, the virus burned off in the summer and didn’t come back in the fall, so the impacts on Thanksgiving and holiday birds were limited.