More jobs to go at Bernard Matthews?

Staff at Bernard Matthews' avian flu-hit Holton site are anxiously waiting to see whether sales of the turkey producer's products recover quickly enough to keep them in work.

The company, which temporarily laid off 130 staff last month (10% of workers on the site), and is preparing to lay off several hundred more after the recent outbreak of avian flu at its farm, admitted that sales of some products had dropped by 40%.

However, despite figures from market researcher ACNielsen revealing a 30% drop in retail sales of fresh turkey in the week ending February 10, supermarkets were reporting a return to normality as Food Manufacture​ went to press on February 23.

Bernard Matthews declined to comment on last month's highly critical report by the government's national emergency epidemiology group into biosecurity measures at Holton. But the company did say that the incident had proved a "learning curve for us and the industry in general". It added that although the farm at Holton remained closed, the slaughterhouse was back up and running after getting the all-clear from the State Veterinary Service.

Meanwhile, experts were still trying to pinpoint the cause of the outbreak. The focus of the investigations has been on biosecurity at the site and transport links with Hungary, from which Bernard Matthews was importing meat. There was a recent outbreak of avian flu in Hungary and the strains of the H5N1 virus found at Holton and in the Hungarian outbreak were said to be effectively identical.