UK sales of fresh, processed and frozen turkey have been hit by the avian flu outbreak at the Bernard Matthews plant in Suffolk, according to data published by Nielsen’s Scantrack service which is compiled from EPoS sales data.
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The data shows that sales of fresh turkey across some 74,000 stores fell by 30% in the week ending 10 February 2007, against the previous week, representing a drop in retail sales from GBP3.4m (US$6.63m) to GBP2.4m. The fall versus the same week of the previous year was 20%. Frozen turkey sales fell by 33% on both a year-on-year and week-on-week basis. Sales of turkey treated pieces were also down 30%.
“Despite experts assuring the public that there is no risk of humans contracting avian flu via the food chain we have still recorded a significant drop in turkey sales,” said Eleni Nicholas, group managing director of ACNielsen UK and Ireland.
However, throughout this period chicken sales have not been as badly affected, Nielsen said. In fact, chicken sales were actually 3% higher compared with the same week in 2006, though they had fallen by 8.5% on a week-by-week basis. “Since early January fresh chicken sales have been fairly consistent at around GBP34m per week but dropped to GBP31.5m in the week ending 10 February 2007.”
