Turkey producer forced out by health and safety regulations

An organic producer who has been supplying festive turkeys and geese to the Irish market for 20 years claims to have been forced out of the lucrative Christmas trade by “inflexible and costly” health and safety regulations.

Jenny McNally, who farms at Balrickard, Co Dublin, with husband Patrick, is a small-time producer, combining poultry with organic vegetables. But she claims to have been warned by the Irish Food Safety Authority that to continue selling geese and turkeys at Christmas, she must become a registered processor, with appropriate facilities, or use a designated plant more than 60 miles away.

“Given the scale of our operation, we couldn’t justify the cost that would involve, so we opted out of the Christmas trade,” she said. “I think it’s crazy to have such costly and inflexible regulations for small producers, given the current state of the Irish economy.”

For next Christmas, in a bid to escape official sanction, she is planning to set up a geese and turkey club, with customers invited to join and become shareholders in individual birds. That way, she claims, they would be able to dictate how the birds are killed and processed without falling foul of regulations.

A spokesman for the Food Safety Authority said the rules covering small producers “are there to safeguard the public”. The McNallys had not been prevented from processing, he added, but had decided of their own volition to opt out of the business.