America might be going cold turkey on turkey.
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, the nation’s turkey flock has decreased to the smallest size in 40 years — and a fall rebound in avian flu cases is adding to the damage.
Due to tighter production and losses from disease, wholesale turkey prices are about 40% higher than they were last year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
According to USDA data cited by the bureau, wholesale prices for turkey are expected to increase to $1.32 per pound — even with production falling to a 40-year low.
There’s expected to be 4.8 billion pounds of production, which is 5% below 2024.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) hit the turkey industry hard, impacting about 18.7 million turkeys and accounting for 10% of all birds affected by the virus since 2022.
This number reported by the Farm Bureau on Oct. 1 includes 2.2 million turkeys affected so far in 2025, mainly impacting 12 states.
In 2025, 195 million turkeys were raised, which is 3% less year over year and 36% below the peak in 1996.
According to USDA data, nearly 514,000 turkeys have been affected by fresh bird flu outbreaks this month alone — mostly in Minnesota.
However, experts haven’t lost hope for holiday dinners. The National Turkey Federation told Axios that there will be enough for Thanksgiving, but supply could potentially tighten for fresh or specific-size birds if cases of avian flu increase in the coming weeks.
“U.S. turkey growers and processors have been working around the clock, managing through challenges like avian influenza and avian metapneumovirus,” said Leslee Oden, the Federation’s president and CEO.
“We feel confident in the frozen turkey supply, and while there’s been an uptick in bird flu cases, we do not see those impacting overall supply right now,” Oden told Axios.
Oden noted that if shoppers want a specific size of type of turkey, they should plan ahead just to be safe.
A spokesperson for Butterball confirmed to Axios that there will be plenty of available options from their brand regardless of the “ever-evolving, industrywide challenge.”
Last year, a survey by Finance Buzz crowned Hawaii as the home of the most expensive turkeys in the United States, costing $52.85 for a 15-pound specimen. Alaska came in second at $44.85 per turkey, on average. New York came in sixth place, with turkeys costing $35.85.
The average cost of a Thanksgiving meal for 10 in 2024 was $58.08, or about $5.80 per person, according to last year’s American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual Thanksgiving dinner survey.
In 2022, a record of $64.06 was set, the highest since the bureau began its yearly assessment in 1986.
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