forward to that nice juicy North Carolina turkey, be prepared to pay a little more than last year because a disease has been killing off hundreds of the birds.

Some farms have lost 1,000 turkeys a day which is devastating due to the fact that North Carolina is the nation's leading producer of the birds.

The illness may be contributing to a 5-cent a pound price increase compared with last fall.

Mostly younger birds get the sickness and they die within days.

"I've been studying turkey diseases for 25 years and this is by far the most serious disease I've come across,'' said John Barnes, a researcher at the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine.

Exact numbers were not available, but some farmers were losing 1,000 birds a day, said Willie Featherstone, director of the Union County Cooperative Extension Service.

The disease, called "spiking mortality'', is transmitted through faeces and direct contact, and can also be spread by flies and beetles. The illness was discovered in 1991 and has since spread to Virginia, Georgia, Indiana and New York.

Turkeys are a $519 million-a-year industry for North Carolina. Nationwide, the industry has suffered other setbacks this year: More than 2 million birds died in the summer's heat wave.

*** Salmon lovers may also find themselves unable to get obtain their favourite kind.

Emphasis on raising salmon in hatcheries, once thought the key to their survival, is pushing many naturally spawning salmon species to the brink of extinction in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, the National Research Council said this week.

"It isn't enough to focus only on the abundance of salmon. The long-term survival of salmon depends crucially on a diverse and rich store of genetic variation,'' the council said in a new report. "We have already lost a substantial portion of the genetic diversity that existed in these salmon species 150 years ago.'' The report concludes that saving wild salmon will require a wide variety of costly measures addressing their entire migratory life cycle, from cutbacks in ocean fishing as far away as Alaska to prohibitions on logging and livestock grazing near inland mountain streams.

*** There is good and bad news for fruit-eaters. There will be more pears available from the US -- but fewer apples.

A good supply of d'Anjou pears this year is expected to boost US pear exports by five percent from last year to about 150,000 tons.

Total US pear exports were valued at $72 million in the year that ended June 30. That was $800,000 ahead of the previous year, the Agriculture Department said.

A reduced US apple crop this year is expected to mean fewer exports and a slight decline in the value of those exports from last year's record $423 million.

Apple exports by US growers in the year that began July 1 are forecast at 605,000 tons, down from last year's record volume of 697,829, the Agriculture Department said.