Turkey production on the rise, HPAI lingers on

U.S. turkey companies produced 6.77 billion pounds of live turkey in 2023, according to WATT PoultryUSA’s Annual Top Turkey Company survey. This represents a 6.9% increase over the 6.34 billion pounds produced in 2022, but 0.78% less than the 6.824 billion pounds produced in 2021.

The top 22 U.S. turkey producers experienced a challenging year in 2023. In 2022, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) claimed nearly 10 million head of turkeys in the U.S., and this reduced head slaughtered by around 4.7% in the last half of the year and into early 2023. Because of this drop in supply, commodity meat and whole bird prices were relatively high in early 2023.