http://www.forbes.com/sites/anaswan...reasons-your-thanksgiving-turkey-is-so-cheap/
The average cost of a Thanksgiving meal for 10 this year is $49.41, up 37 cents from last year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. Their typical dinner doesn’t include mashed potatoes – an unforgivable oversight, in my view. Otherwise, however, it’s pretty substantial, with turkey, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie and whipped cream, cranberry sauce, stuffing, rolls and some vegetables.
At $5 a plate, the price of that Thanksgiving meal is cheaper than most fast food restaurants. For one of the most indulgent feasts of the year, this may seem a little strange.
Why is this average dinner so cheap? The main reason is the low price of the turkey. The average turkey in the grocery story is quite inexpensive — about $21.65 for a 16-pound turkey in 2014, down 11 cents from last year. (The higher cost of the Thanksgiving meal overall this year is due to higher prices for sweet potatoes, milk and whipping cream.)
We all like to save money. Once you look into the reasons behind the lower cost of your turkey, however, you may not be quite so thankful. Here are five reasons your Thanksgiving bird might be too cheap
1. Factory farm practices make turkey cheap, but also kind of gross.
[EGG]The turkey that the pilgrims ate looked little like what we eat today. Turkey operations began specially breeding turkeys in the 1950s for size and speed of growth, especially in the breast. The weight of an average turkey has more than doubled between 1929 and 2007, growing from 13 pounds to 29 pounds. Breeders now raise some adult male birds that weigh over 80 pounds – about on par with the average Labrador.
How did our turkeys get so heavy? The key to this weight gain was artificial insemination. Turkeys over 30 pounds are “inefficient” breeders – in blunter terms, the male turkeys’ chests got so big they couldn’t mount the females. But with artificial insemination, these portly mega-birds – a breed called “Broad Breasted Whites” – could still pass on their genes[/EGG]
Decades of artificial insemination and crowded factory farm conditions produce turkeys that have trouble walking, are aggressive and sometimes cannibalistic, and easily develop infections. The industry responds by putting large doses of antibiotics into their feed and “debeaking” the birds (trimming their beaks) when they are a few days old so they can’t hurt each other. Among other yucky things, these birds will have lived pretty miserable lives in crowded sheds and are more likely to carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
2. Your turkey is fed with taxpayer money.
Factory farm turkeys are so cheap not just because they live in close quarters, but also because of their diet. They are almost exclusively fed a diet of corn and soybeans to bulk them up quickly – far different from turkeys’ natural diet of nuts, seeds, plants, worms and other crawly things.
You probably know that federal agricultural programs heavily subsidize corn and soybeans. The government is scheduled to pay out about $134 billion over the next decade to support farmers growing commodity crops like corn and soy. Taxpayers ultimately pay about 5 to 10 percent of the market price of these subsidized commodity crops. In contrast, the “specialty growers” who produce fruits and vegetables will only receive about $4 billion of federal money over the next decade.
These subsidies create a ripple effect through the food chain. Factory farmed meat and processed foods that contain a lot of corn and soy end up much cheaper than fruits and vegetables, with negative effects on American health[/EGG].
3. The average Broad-Breasted White can be frozen for up to two years.
Americans eat about 46 million turkeys on Thanksgiving – more than 20% of the turkeys that we eat all year. Getting all of those birds slaughtered and to grocery stores on time is an operational challenge, to say the least.
The easiest way to do this is to raise the birds throughout the year, and then freeze and store mass quantities of turkey as the holiday approaches. As of September 30, nearly 300 million pounds of whole turkeys were in frozen storage — a little less than half of the more than 700 million pounds of turkey that Americans are expected to eat this Thanksgiving
4. Stores often sell turkeys at below cost to entice customers to buy other marked-up Thanksgiving necessities.
Consumers use the price of turkey as a way to comparison shop between stores. Big grocery stores know this, and they often offer the turkey as a loss leader to get customers into the store, where they are almost certain to buy other, higher-priced Thanksgiving staples.
5. Some people buy cheaper turkey on Thanksgiving than other times of the year, since they’re feeding it mostly to guests.
Not to make you suspicious about your relatives or anything, but some economists speculate that people are more willing to pay more for turkey outside of November because they are buying it for their own consumption. On Thanksgiving when they have 10-15 extended-family mouths to feed, some cooks will be cutting corners.
Should we be thankful for cheap turkeys?
This cheap turkey is a mixed blessing, of course. For those who truly can’t afford to pay more, the low cost of providing a Thanksgiving feast for your family might seem like a miracle.
Looking beyond the dinner table, however, there are a lot of individual and social decisions – like how to regulate factory farms and subsidize agriculture – that have gone into the cheap price of turkey. Maybe we should ask ourselves if that low cost is really worth it
The average cost of a Thanksgiving meal for 10 this year is $49.41, up 37 cents from last year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. Their typical dinner doesn’t include mashed potatoes – an unforgivable oversight, in my view. Otherwise, however, it’s pretty substantial, with turkey, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie and whipped cream, cranberry sauce, stuffing, rolls and some vegetables.
At $5 a plate, the price of that Thanksgiving meal is cheaper than most fast food restaurants. For one of the most indulgent feasts of the year, this may seem a little strange.
Why is this average dinner so cheap? The main reason is the low price of the turkey. The average turkey in the grocery story is quite inexpensive — about $21.65 for a 16-pound turkey in 2014, down 11 cents from last year. (The higher cost of the Thanksgiving meal overall this year is due to higher prices for sweet potatoes, milk and whipping cream.)
We all like to save money. Once you look into the reasons behind the lower cost of your turkey, however, you may not be quite so thankful. Here are five reasons your Thanksgiving bird might be too cheap
1. Factory farm practices make turkey cheap, but also kind of gross.
[EGG]The turkey that the pilgrims ate looked little like what we eat today. Turkey operations began specially breeding turkeys in the 1950s for size and speed of growth, especially in the breast. The weight of an average turkey has more than doubled between 1929 and 2007, growing from 13 pounds to 29 pounds. Breeders now raise some adult male birds that weigh over 80 pounds – about on par with the average Labrador.
How did our turkeys get so heavy? The key to this weight gain was artificial insemination. Turkeys over 30 pounds are “inefficient” breeders – in blunter terms, the male turkeys’ chests got so big they couldn’t mount the females. But with artificial insemination, these portly mega-birds – a breed called “Broad Breasted Whites” – could still pass on their genes[/EGG]
Decades of artificial insemination and crowded factory farm conditions produce turkeys that have trouble walking, are aggressive and sometimes cannibalistic, and easily develop infections. The industry responds by putting large doses of antibiotics into their feed and “debeaking” the birds (trimming their beaks) when they are a few days old so they can’t hurt each other. Among other yucky things, these birds will have lived pretty miserable lives in crowded sheds and are more likely to carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
2. Your turkey is fed with taxpayer money.
Factory farm turkeys are so cheap not just because they live in close quarters, but also because of their diet. They are almost exclusively fed a diet of corn and soybeans to bulk them up quickly – far different from turkeys’ natural diet of nuts, seeds, plants, worms and other crawly things.
You probably know that federal agricultural programs heavily subsidize corn and soybeans. The government is scheduled to pay out about $134 billion over the next decade to support farmers growing commodity crops like corn and soy. Taxpayers ultimately pay about 5 to 10 percent of the market price of these subsidized commodity crops. In contrast, the “specialty growers” who produce fruits and vegetables will only receive about $4 billion of federal money over the next decade.
These subsidies create a ripple effect through the food chain. Factory farmed meat and processed foods that contain a lot of corn and soy end up much cheaper than fruits and vegetables, with negative effects on American health[/EGG].
3. The average Broad-Breasted White can be frozen for up to two years.
Americans eat about 46 million turkeys on Thanksgiving – more than 20% of the turkeys that we eat all year. Getting all of those birds slaughtered and to grocery stores on time is an operational challenge, to say the least.
The easiest way to do this is to raise the birds throughout the year, and then freeze and store mass quantities of turkey as the holiday approaches. As of September 30, nearly 300 million pounds of whole turkeys were in frozen storage — a little less than half of the more than 700 million pounds of turkey that Americans are expected to eat this Thanksgiving
4. Stores often sell turkeys at below cost to entice customers to buy other marked-up Thanksgiving necessities.
Consumers use the price of turkey as a way to comparison shop between stores. Big grocery stores know this, and they often offer the turkey as a loss leader to get customers into the store, where they are almost certain to buy other, higher-priced Thanksgiving staples.
5. Some people buy cheaper turkey on Thanksgiving than other times of the year, since they’re feeding it mostly to guests.
Not to make you suspicious about your relatives or anything, but some economists speculate that people are more willing to pay more for turkey outside of November because they are buying it for their own consumption. On Thanksgiving when they have 10-15 extended-family mouths to feed, some cooks will be cutting corners.
Should we be thankful for cheap turkeys?
This cheap turkey is a mixed blessing, of course. For those who truly can’t afford to pay more, the low cost of providing a Thanksgiving feast for your family might seem like a miracle.
Looking beyond the dinner table, however, there are a lot of individual and social decisions – like how to regulate factory farms and subsidize agriculture – that have gone into the cheap price of turkey. Maybe we should ask ourselves if that low cost is really worth it
