Seaside FM
The Shores Resource Centre, 29-31 Seaside Road, Withernsea, HU19 2DL
01964 263 105
contact@seasideradio.co.uk
Seaside Radio Limited registered company number 05031695 & registered charity number 1115311.
Richard Griffiths, the British Poultry Council chief executive, told the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: "The usual amount of free range birds grown for Christmas is around 1.2 to 1.3 million. We have seen around 600,000 of those free range birds being directly affected."
When asked what the bird shortage might mean for prices, Mr Griffiths said that he didn't know, adding that the question on price is one for retailers.
Poultry farmer Paul Kelly, of Kelly Turkeys, told the committee: "I don't think UK turkey prices will be going up. I think it will just be a supply issue rather than the prices being hiked.
"But there will be a big, big shortage of British free range turkeys on the shelves this year."
Around 36% of poultry farms have been affected by the outbreak of bird flu - the worst the UK has ever faced - with Mr Kelly saying it has been "devastating" for farmers.
READ MORE: Another 29,000 chickens to be culled in Netherlands due to highly-infectious bird flu strain
"The challenge for a lot of the smaller seasonal producers that produce Christmas poultry is they have their Christmas flock on their farm and when the turkeys are infected they all die within four days," Mr Kelly added.
"To give you an example, we had one farmer with 9,500 (birds). The first infection was on Thursday evening, 20 mortality, and by Monday lunchtime they were all dead."
As a small business, Mr Kelly said that he had lost £1.2m this year due to turkey deaths, putting the future of rearing poultry for Christmas on the line.
Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts
He added: "Can we take the risk to grow Christmas poultry based on what we've seen this year? We couldn't. And had I known what I know now we would not have grown the turkeys we did.
"Looking to next year, I don't want to put the farm at risk.
"Without a vaccine in place or a compensation scheme that is fit for purpose, I don't know whether we'd have the confidence to grow Christmas poultry next year."
Mr Griffiths added: "This year the seasonal producers have been so badly affected. I can see many of those taking a good hard look at whether they want to be in Christmas poultry."