FESTIVE FOOD:CHRISTMAS HAS come early for a turkey farmer who despaired of selling his stock to the extent that he was preparing to give them away.
David Dempsey (39) has reared 400 free-range turkeys on his 10-acre Clonough Farm in Inch, between Arklow, Co Wicklow, and Gorey in Co Wexford.
As of yesterday morning, he had orders for only 50 birds and said his business was decimated by cheap supermarket imports even though he only reared small turkeys because of the recession.
He went on 2fm’s Gerry Ryan Show yesterday morning, originally to talk about the correct way to kill a turkey, but he ended up sharing his plight with listeners.
Mr Dempsey said his turkeys sell for €3 a pound (€6.60 a kilo) but supermarket turkeys were going for as little as €2.50 a kg.
His birds cost an average of between €21 and €39 and are reared locally.
Most supermarket turkeys were imported from Italy and eastern European and were grown in hothouse conditions, he claimed.
He had 350 free-range birds in cold storage and was going to give them out door-to-door in the poorer housing estates of Gorey and Arklow if they were not sold by tomorrow.
Mr Dempsey said that as a result of his comments, he had an “absolutely fantastic response” from the public and received 150 orders for turkeys within a couple of hours of the programme’s broadcast. “By the looks of things, they will all be gone by tomorrow,” Mr Dempsey said.
He is also promising to reserve a small number of turkeys for the Simon Community.
