Turkey’s resilience and wide geographic dispersal has maintained the supply reliability of turkey meat nationally, despite a leading production region suffering disproportionate losses to highly pathogenic avian influenza in spring 2015. Turkeys lost to the virus represented just 3 percent of the population of 240 million birds, concentrated in portions of a handful of states — few among the 14 states that annually produce 87 percent of the turkey supply. The individual financial impact on those growers in the upper Midwest has been the most apparent and immediate; however, government indemnities cover a significant portion of the loss, and processors typically also provide assistance to ensure the grower can continue in business without suffering a complete financial collapse.
Although turkey producers struggled to clean and disinfect barns and get back into production, progress has continued through the fall with restocking. Economist Dr. Thomas Elam says, “We have seen no indications that demand has declined this summer.”