Americans bought about 50,000,000 Turkeys last week and will purchase almost that many again for Christmas.
Do we suppose fifty million turkeys were processed at the processing plant last week?
Do we suppose that turkey growers have processing plants capable of handling fifty million turkeys in a week?
Do we imagine hundreds of experienced turkey processors waiting in the coffee break room until a week or two before Thanksgiving and Christmas?
It can't happen like that. I'm afraid the "Fresh Turkey" people pay 2 or 3 times more than for a frozen turkey, and those turkeys had to be processed by the beginning of last September.
Most of the turkeys bought for Thanksgiving and Christmas will be frozen, having been processed many months ago. They were processed, vacuum sealed in plastic wrap, dipped in liquid nitrogen (-321 degrees F.), and kept frozen. The cell walls of anything frozen that fast simply don't have time to break. The breaking of the cell walls of meat in the normal freezing process is what causes the juice to run from meats in the thawing process, more so than fresh meat.
Marketing programs have convinced some people that "fresh" turkey is better than frozen. And why not? If you can convince people to pay twice as much for your less "fresh" product, why not?
The bird on my Thanksgiving table will have been processed last June or July, immediately dipped in a -321 F. bath, and kept frozen until now. I'll pay about 1/2 or 1/3 as much as a "fresh" turkey that was processed in August or September and has been kept "fresh" for the last 2 or 3 months.
