Organic Turkey or Regular Turkey

November 19, 2008 - Thanksgiving is a holiday of festivities, full of abundant food, and year-by-year people are starting to buy organic turkeys. Ernie Talerico, meat manager at Price Chopper says there are more people asking about the organic turkeys nowadays.

"We just started a couple of years ago with the organic and…has been picking up because more and more people are feeling health conscious."

Cobblestone Valley Farm, an all-organic farm has been selling organic turkeys for several years and they are always sold out on preorders long before Thanksgiving.

We usually put people on the waiting list and “if they are lucky” they could get an extra turkey, said Casey Knapp who works with his dad on the farm.

Even though the organic turkeys are more expensive than the regular frozen turkeys, people say they taste better. Ruth Fox of Syracuse who has been buying organic turkeys for some years says she prefers it over the regular ones.

“I think they taste better because they don’t have any additives added to them,” said Fox. 

Other Syracuse residents like Leon Haar is just not interested in organic turkeys.

“For people who are interested in that, I’m sure it’s good. For us it doesn’t make that much a difference for a turkey,” said Haar.

When asked what are the majority people are concerned about, Talerico said, “people go for the price,” rather than the quality of the turkey.

If you want to learn about Paulina Mancheno, an Ecuador girl's daily work with the turkeys and her reasons of coming to the United States to learn about organic farming watch the following.