Fortunately, we don't have to rely on anecdotal evidence like whatever Wal-Mart is pricing their turkeys at (because WMT can use turkeys as a loss leader). The current news articles are based on the USDA assessment of nationwide turkey prices, across all retailers.

Per the current report (which is what was cited in the news coverage), they're expecting national average turkey prices to be about 133 cents per pound for 2025. That's up from about 103 cents per pound for 2024. We can look back to the exact same report in 2019, and we see that the price back then was 88.5 cents per pound.

The 40% figure is from USDA's projection of even higher turkey prices in Q4, expected to be about 155 cents per pound.

2025: ers.usda.gov: PDF document
2024: ers.usda.gov: PDF document
2019: ers.usda.gov: PDF document

So regardless of what WalMart might be doing, turkey will be significantly more expensive this year than last - and certainly more expensive than in 2019.