Organic Turkeys in short supply

Friday 19 December 2014

Islanders will face a shortage of organic turkeys this Christmas due to problems with ferries earlier this year.

Jersey’s largest organic turkey farmer was unable to get his regular stocks of chicks onto the Island in time to rear for Christmas when the ferries were disrupted this summer.

The Commodore Clipper was out of action from 14 July until the end of August after it hit the sea bottom in the Little Russel, en-route to Guernsey.

Steven Carter, from Farm Fresh Organics said: “We normally need to get the chicks in July to give them enough time to grow for Christmas. Our supplier in the UK was ready to take them to the ferry three weeks in a row, but we just couldn’t get them on.

“There was an issue because they were unaccompanied livestock and they couldn’t go because the timetable wasn’t fixed. By the time it was sorted, it was too late to get enough chicks.”

Steven has been supplying organic turkeys in Jersey for the past five years, raising them at his organic poultry and vegetable farm in St Lawrence.

He said: “We only managed to get half the organic turkeys we wanted this year. Normally we would have taken at least 50, but this year it was down to 25. The chicks were about six to eight weeks old when we finally managed to get them to the island in October. Since then we’ve been feeding them up and they’re now ready for the Christmas table.

“We’ve had a lot of very disappointed people. A lot of our regular customers who’ve been having our organic turkeys for years just weren’t able to get them. We definitely could have sold a lot more.”

Condor replaced the Clipper with extra fast ferry services for passengers, and put on additional sailings of the Goodwill from Portsmouth to help clear some freight. However, some businesses like Farm Fresh Organics are still feeling the effects of the disruption six months later.

Steven said: “Not being able to sell the turkeys may also have a knock on effect with organic vegetable sales as the people who would come to us to buy their whole Christmas dinner may end up going elsewhere

“The ferry company couldn’t do anything about it though. It’s just one of those unfortunate things. Hopefully next year will be much better.”