Americans to consume 248 million turkeys in 2011

A combined number of 248 million turkeys, a traditional food on Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables, was expected to be raised and devoured by Americans in 2011, the U.S. Commerce Department reported. The number of turkeys to be raised this year increased 2 percent from last year, the department said in a factsheet report released on its blog ahead of the Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday of every November. "The turkeys produced in 2010 together weighed 7.11 billion pounds and were valued at 4.37 billion U.S. dollars," noted the report. A combination of six U.S. states was forecast to account for nearly two-thirds of the turkeys produced in the nation in 2011, with Minnesota at the top of the list to produce around 46.5 million turkeys this year, figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed.