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Food

Why Turkey Might Not Be Your Thanksgiving Centerpiece This Year

With the turkey industry ravaged by this year's bird flu pandemic and pork prices plummeting, experts think that people might get unconventional when it comes to their main holiday meat.
Photo via Flickr user Aquila

It's hard to imagine a Thanksgiving without a turkey, but a nearly perfect storm is forming that could knock the traditional bird off the menu.

Thanks to bird flu, turkeys will be a bit more expensive this year. Pork, on the other hand, is in abundance—and cheap. In a seemingly unimaginable situation, analysts at the Netherlands-based Rabobank are predicting that some families will be skipping out on turkey in favor of gobbling down ham this year.

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You may recall earlier this year that bird flu was making eggs more expensive. Now, with fewer adult birds around, too, shoppers could feel a bigger hit to the wallet when picking up a turkey. Frozen turkey costs are up about 9 percent compared to last year. Wholesale hog prices, meanwhile, have tumbled more than 40 percent year over year thanks to a plethora of pigs. Bloomberg spoke with one farmer in Fort Worth, Texas, who is selling a honey-glazed ham for 15 percent less than what he charged last year.

READ: How to Make Ham, Eggs, and Shad Roe

A strong US dollar is also leading foreign buyers to purchase pork elsewhere, with pork exports down 4 percent. We are awash in historic amounts of hog, with 27 percent more than this time a year ago. That's forcing pig producers to sell what they have for less.

"We've had more ham than at any other time, so there should be Thanksgiving ham on the table, not turkey," Will Sawyer, an Atlanta-based vice president for Rabobank International, told AgWeb. "It's a heck of a lot cheaper than last year."

Though bird flu wiped out 7.5 million turkeys in the Midwest earlier this year—nearly 4 percent of the industry—others are saying there's no need to worry about the turkey supply.

"If you look at the big number out there … we're in good shape," Kerry Doughty, CEO of Butterball, the largest producer of turkey products in the US, told Business Insider. "[Turkeys in] cold storage in September of this year, versus September of last year are almost identical."

READ: How an Amish Turkey Farmer Found a Home on the Internet

Whether you're purchasing a fresh or frozen bird will have an effect on what you'll pay. About 80 percent of turkeys in the US are frozen, and producers will begin producing turkeys for next year the day after Thanksgiving. Due to how deals are done in the industry, many major turkey providers had secured this year's turkeys before bird flu took its toll. If you want to purchase a fresh turkey, though, you'll likely be affected by shortages, meaning a bit higher prices.

The average price of a 15-pound turkey should be about $3 more this year. If ham is so cheap and turkey reasonable, maybe creative cooks out there will conceive some ham and turkey Frankenstein, a turkenham or hamturken. Whatever happens, leftovers will be delicious, ham or no ham.