Thirty-three years of illegality will come to an end this Christmas when the last four turkey sales - at livestock marts in Donegal, Monaghan, Carlow and Wexford - are held for the last time.
Turkey sales were an annual feature of the Christmas festival despite the fact that under the 1966 Act governing the control of livestock marts, turkeys were not included as livestock by the Department of Agriculture, rendering the turkey trade illegal.
But as the number of producers rearing small numbers of turkeys dropped and fears of new diseases have grown, the Department is now insisting on enforcing the law in the new year.
The trade in live and dead turkeys received its heaviest blow last year when the site of the largest sale of birds in the State, at Ashbourne, Co Meath, was sold to a car auction firm.
Mr Don McGrane, chairman of the Irish Farmers' Association's poultry committee, said most marts which carried on the trade as a service to their customers were no longer interested because of the low sales.
"In recent years, as the Department began to tighten because of fears about food safety and E.coli, managements began to find the amount of preparation they had to do to hold a sale was too much," he said.
"A whole area had to be set aside and cleaned and with labour as expensive and scarce as it is now, it did not make financial sense to continue.
"There will be four more sales at marts before Christmas and then what was an illegal practice for 33 years will cease," he said.
Mr McGrane said that consumers could expect to pay more for their turkey dinner this year because of rising costs, especially in butcher shops.
"The producer is selling the birds at between £1.05 and £1.10 per lb and I expect the butcher will be charging between £1.45 and £1.60 for their turkeys."
The 2,000 producers in the Republic, he said, produced nearly three million turkeys this year and about one-third of the output will be for the Christmas market.
He said that while there were plenty of birds available for the season, consumers should order early from their butchers or retail outlets.
"We have become so used to getting what we ask for immediately, it would be easy to forget that there has to be forward planning in buying the turkey. Butchers will not order birds on spec and it would be prudent to order rather than expect," he said.