According to the nationalchickencouncil.org in 1965 the per capita consumption of chicken in America was 36.9 lbs, whereas the per capita consumption of turkey was 7.6 lbs, and for all red meat was 133.9 lbs. For 2016, it is estimated that red meat consumption will be at 105.3 lbs, chicken will be at 91.4 lbs, and turkey at 16.2 lbs. This means that in the last fifty years, that red meat consumption on a per capita basis has actually declined a significant percentage, whereas chicken consumption has grown enormously to which it is only a matter of time, perhaps five years, before the per capita chicken consumption will be greater than red meat consumption, and while turkey per capita consumption has grown in consumption by more than 100% over the last fifty years, it has actually fallen further behind chicken because chicken consumption has grown at an ever higher consumption rate. The most significant reasons for chicken to have taken significant market share away from red meat are because of its cost per pound, which can be attributed to the more efficient raising of chickens, the much greater weight of chickens that are raised today, as well as the fact that chickens also take less time to mature than they did fifty years ago, as well as the wide usage of chicken products in fast food restaurants and the like.
A lot of the advantages of chicken are the same advantages of turkey, to wit, that turkeys have also grown in size and breast meat considerably over the last fifty years, farmers have also become more efficient in the raising of, and that on a per pound basis, turkey prices are comparable to chicken prices, and are often cheaper than chicken. The main issues against turkey are that it is often associated with eating as a main course only during Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities, and virtually ignored as an evening meal, thereafter, most likely because of the physical size of turkeys as well as the labor and cooking times of turkey. That is to say, that the average turkey sold to consumers is simply too big for everyday usage.
There are a couple of ways to combat the physical size of a turkey, to which one is to break the turkey down into more manageable parts such as turkey bacon, turkey nuggets, turkey breast meat and patties, turkey wings and so forth. The other way to make turkey a more common meal to consume is to have different sizes of turkeys, consider that back in the 1930s the average size of a turkey was 13.2 pounds, whereas the present day size of a chicken is 9.25 pounds, so that the specific development of turkeys as an 1:1 alternative to chickens could readily be accomplished if certain specific turkeys were re-bred in such a manner so as to downsize their weight to match more closely to the chicken, and perhaps in order to further differentiate this as a different breed of turkey, call this smaller version of a turkey by a different name, such as a turket.
The great thing about turkeys is that their taste isn't nearly as bland as chicken, in addition to fact that turkey is already well known and popular and commonly consumed as bacon, lunch meat, as well as for special family occasions, so that given enough push and marketing, there isn't any real reason why turkey can't be consumed at a significantly higher rate, especially if the pricing of such, is comparable to chicken.