Butterball has shortage of unfrozen, large turkeys, according to Big Y officials

The Republican ^ | Nov 13, 2013 | Jim Kinney

[libertarian27]

SPRINGFIELD - Butterball has just announced to officials at supermarkets around the country, including Big Y World Class Markets, that there is a national shortage of their large fresh (unfrozen) turkeys for this Thanksgiving.

A mistake was made in the production of fresh Butterball brand turkeys this year and the company has cut every retailer's allotment by 50 percent, said Claire D'Amour-Daley, Big Y vice president of of corporate communications. The cut represents thousands of turkeys that would have been shipped to Big Y. The same goes for every other retailer, she said.

Butterball's corporate offices did not return calls for comment.

D'Amour-Daley said Big Y has larger fresh turkeys from other brands, frozen larger Butterball turkeys and unfrozen smaller Butterball turkeys.

This shortage involves only Butterball brand large fresh turkeys of 16 pounds or more and not frozen Butterballs of any size or smaller weight fresh Butterballs.

[Gene Eric]

>> A mistake was made in the production ... by 50 percent

Yeah, sure...

[Chickensoup]

Butterball are the turkey with the yellow hydrogenated food product injected under the skin. Yuck.

Get minimally processed bird, fresh or frozen.

[chaosagent]

“Hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement.”

[PapaBear3625]

Kind of like if the candy companies forgot to make extra candy for Halloween.

According to supermarket news, Butterball says the issue was "unexpected low weight gains", so it sounds like there was an issue with many of the batch of turkeys being raised for being slaughtered in mid-November.

[libertarian27]

Update: Butterball confirmed it has a shortage of fresh turkeys due to "unexpected low weight gains."

"While we are continuing to evaluate all potential causes, we are working to remedy the issue and are currently seeing turkey weight gain improvements," Butterball said in an emailed statement.

Maybe they changed their diet to lo-carb :)
Looks like there will be a plethora of frozen birds for the year to come - they'll most likely shift many of these slow growing birds to frozen inventory....along with more smaller fresh birds on the shelf for this Thanksgiving.

[Right Wing Assault]

Butterball says the issue was "unexpected low weight gains"

Again, they've been doing this business for years. How can they have "unexpected low weight gains?"

Are the birds on hunger strikes, or are they feeding them a new diet? I can't believe they would make major changes to their whole business without first running tests on a small batch.