Since the outbreak in mid-February, 12 weekly sales of fresh turkey have declined 29% versus the 12 week period ending 29th April 2006. In actual terms this equates to a loss of £9.4m from the industry.

Eleni Nicholas, Group Managing Director ACNielsen UK & Ireland commented, “In the immediate aftermath of the outbreak we saw weekly sales of fresh turkey fall by over 45% YoY so at 27% down YoY we are seeing a definite slowdown in decline but recovery is sluggish and we do not foresee a return to growth in this sector for some time.”

Declines in Frozen turkey have also slowed but sales remain 33% behind last year for the 12 weeks ending 28th April 2007. Immediately following the outbreak weekly sales were down around 50%-60% YoY here.

Ms Nicholas continued, “When looking at total Turkey sales from February to April, Nielsen can also identify that 28% of households bought Turkey as opposed to 35% of the population for the same period last year – that equates to 1.8 million households dropping out of the Turkey market over the last 3 months.” In the latest 4 weeks, 3.5 million households bought into turkey as opposed to 5 million for the same period last year which equates to 30% less households buying.