Let's talk turkey

They’re easy to rear, they’re friendly and they needn’t only be for Christmas. Kate Green talks to turkey experts, who explain why we should be eating the heritage breeds

- Kate Green

NOT many poets are moved to compose odes to the turkey, but the creatures sparked something in Benjamin Zephaniah, who, in 1995, penned the immortal lines ‘Turkeys are cool, turkeys are wicked/ An every turkey has a Mum’. As well as observing that ‘Turkeys just wanna play reggae/Turkeys just wanna hip-hop’, the Rastafarian writer makes the more serious point that the birds are more than Christmas lunch and have a right ‘Not to be caged up and genetically made up’.

The prospect of restricted Christmas gatherings means that the smaller, naturally produced, native-breed turkey, which was first raised centuries ago by the Aztecs, might come into its own this year, music to the ears of those valiantly promoting these legacy breeds whose precious genes are the foundation of the commercial turkey industry and, in a disease crisis, would be needed again.

‘Some, although not all, commercial breeds are simply fast-growing and don’t provide the quality of meat, if we’re going to feed the world, we can’t only have slow meat internationally,’ reasons Philippe Wilson, head of conservation at the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) and a champion of unusual fowl. ‘What we’re trying to do is highlight the slower-growing native breeds that could help people set up local supply chains.’

He and Emily Burton, professor of sustainable food production at Nottingham Trent University, are researching the relative health and meat quality of the slower-maturing, narrow-breasted breeds versus those grown intensively, some of which, critics point out, can be so overweight their legs give way.