Turkey trouble: Farmers, meatpackers and butchers are all in the dark a week from Thanksgiving
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“That’s certainly a concerning situation for us,” said Jean-Michel Laurin, chief executive of the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council. “If we have a bad season, supply is going to be higher. So normally what happens is prices go down, storage stocks go up.”
Loblaw Co. Ltd., the largest supermarket chain in Canada, said it adjusted its Thanksgiving strategy this year, expecting a shift to smaller turkeys as well as a change in who was cooking.
“Thanksgiving is often steeped in tradition (with the same people bringing the turkey each year), and cooking a turkey can be a daunting experience to those who have never tried it,” Loblaw spokesperson Catherine Thomas said in an email. “But we’ve still seen a lot of demand for the larger turkeys, because really, who doesn’t love leftovers.”
The grocer is stocking more easy-to-cook options, including pre-stuffed, cook-from-frozen turkeys, and turkey breast roasts. The roast had been growing as a popular alternative to whole birds even before the pandemic, doubling in sales for Thanksgiving 2019, compared to 2018, according to TFC.
At La Boucherie Capitol, in Montreal’s Jean Talon Market, manager Vito De Benedictis said he ordered roughly 10 per cent more turkey than he did last year, but he’s breaking many of them down to sell more deboned turkey roasts, stuffed breasts and legs, rather than whole birds.
“I’m not expecting big whole turkey sales,” he said.
Sanagan’s Meat Locker, with two locations in Toronto, has 390 turkeys to sell — roughly on par with last year — all ordered from farmers months ago when owner Peter Sanagan had no idea what October would look like.
