Turkeys Could be in Short Supply Over the Holidays as Producers Warn They’re Struggling to Keep Up With Demand, a Report Says

August 17, 2021 2 min learn

This account on the initiating seemed on Industry Insider

American meat producers and distributors are sounding the apprehension on a doable turkey shortage sooner than the holiday season. 

“The news is now not promising,” a dealer for Shady Brook Farms, one among the nation’s largest turkey suppliers, said in a letter to outlets and distributors, in accordance with a food vendor who received it and spoke to the New York Submit. The corporate also told its distributors in July that “the alternate continues to fight with production concerns,” the Submit reported, citing the letter.

“Shady Brook told us they’ll also simplest give us 50% of the turkeys we need and need for the holidays,” Stew Leonard, who owns Stew Leonard’s grocery chain, told The Submit.

Linked: Chick-fil-A is Going through a Sauce Shortage

Other meat suppliers have made same warnings. The New York-essentially based mostly Morton Williams grocery chain was now not too lengthy ago told by its distributors that it wouldn’t fetch birds weighing decrease than 16 pounds, in accordance with Morton Williams’ meat buyer, Victor Colello, cited by the Submit. 

Birds weighing 16 pounds or much less are extra standard because they capture much less time to defrost and cook dinner than heavier ones, consultants told The Submit. Heavier turkeys are extra obtainable, consultants said.

Cargill, the US corporation which owns Shady Brook Farms, acknowledged the lack to the Submit, saying it was the cease result of “continuing to manage tight labor markets while working to preserve workers honorable from the impacts of COVID-19 within the communities where they operate.”

Linked: There would possibly per chance be a world shortage of rooster wings

“It is crucial to point to,” the company added, “that the overall frozen bird production remains the identical when put next to old years even though moderate bird weights are a exiguous better for every fresh and frozen birds due processing delays.”

These warnings are correct perhaps the most up-to-date in a string of meat shortages which have rocked the US, amid the rising price of uncooked affords and a severe labor crunch.