Farmer from the East warns Turkeys could be harder to get this Christmas
It's due to high levels of Bird Flu in the East
A poultry farmer from the East is warning that Turkeys could be more expensive and less readily available this Christmas.
It's due to high levels of bird flu across the county.
Over 200 cases have been found across the UK by Defra, with close to 5 million birds having died or been culled thanks to the disease in the past two seasons.
Our poultry owners are now entering the fifth week of keeping their flock indoors.
Restrictions that are now in force across the rest of the country, from today.
"You can't make any profit on a bird that you're not selling"
Mark Gorton, managing director of Traditional Norfolk Poultry said:
"We're losing our birds that we should be selling for Christmas. You can't make any profit on a bird that you're not selling. It's not great by any stretch. We are a big company, and we will get through this, but there will be lots of people out there that will question the viability of the poultry industry and whether they want to raise birds going forward."
"In order to give farmers confidence, we need to be able to vaccinate our birds"
Mark added:
"In order to give farmers confidence, we need to be able to vaccinate our birds. There are vaccines available but the legislation that's stopping us using it is frustrating. I've been talking about vaccines for years and years and years. We've had bird flu for 15 or 20 years now and we don't seem to be very much further forward."
What is the Government doing to help?
New government support for the poultry industry was announced last month to assist farmers and producers with the impacts of bird flu.
Under the new plans, the Government will alter the existing bird flu compensation scheme allowing compensation to be paid to farmers from the outset of planned culling rather than at the end.
This will allow them to provide swifter payments to help stem any cash flow pressures and give earlier certainty about entitlement to compensation. The payments better reflect the impact of outbreaks on farmers.
More on the latest Government support can be found here.