Consumers could be facing a shortage of free range turkeys this Christmas as avian flu hits producers, MPs have been told.

Richard Griffiths, chief executive of the British Poultry Council, said that 600,000 out of about 1.3m free range birds had either been culled or died because of the outbreak this year.

The government recently ordered all poultry and captive birds in England to be kept indoors to fight avian flu. Wales, where there have been several outbreaks, is covered by a prevention zone and housing is to be made compulsory from December 2.

Mr Griffiths was speaking to the UK parliamentary committee on the environment, food and rural affairs.

Farmers say they are not sure if there will be price rises but they expect supply issues regarding free range turkeys as a result.

Also speaking to MPs, Paul Kelly, the owner of a turkey hatchery that supplies farms around the UK, told the committee: "I think it will just be a supply issue rather than the prices being hiked.

"But there will be a big, big shortage of British free range turkeys on the shelves this year."

Both the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the British Poultry Council stress the issue is with free range turkeys, and that there are no issues with supplies of other birds.

Defra also said that a levelling off in outbreak numbers suggested recent housing orders were having an impact.

Defra said about 1.4 million turkeys in total had been culled but that about 11 million turkeys were produced annually in the UK, meaning that there would still be a good supply of Christmas turkeys.

The highly infectious H5N1 strain of the disease is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of wild birds around the world and millions of domesticated ones.

Wild birds can spread the flu to poultry and captive birds when they migrate to the UK.