Oregon Turkey Industry All But Gone
Salem, OR November 26, 2008 12:06 p.m.
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DiscussMost Thanksgiving turkeys on the table this year will come from out of state. That’s because Oregon’s once-thriving turkey industry has all but disappeared. Salem Correspondent Chris Lehman reports.
Oregon was never a leader in turkey production. But the state used to turn out a respectable 2.5 million of the birds each year, mostly in the Willamette Valley.
But aside from a few small-scale organic turkey farmers, turkeys are a thing of the past in the state.
Bruce Pokarney of the Oregon Department of Agriculture says the Oregon turkey industry was gobbled up by competition from places like Minnesota and California.
Pokarney: “We’re just too far from the feed sources. And that added expense made it harder to compete with some of these states.”
Pokarney says the final straw was that Oregon turkeys were the subject of a massive safety recall just prior to Thanksgiving of 1992.
The industry never really recovered after that.
© 2008 OPB
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