This year's survey, released yesterday, put the cost of feeding 10 people at $42.91. The grocery bill fell 3.8 percent, the steepest reduction since its 4.3 percent drop at the start of this decade. The slump was also the first since 2004.

"Consumers are benefiting at the grocery store from significantly lower energy prices" and the effects of a U.S. recession, Jim Sartwelle, an economist at the bureau, said in a statement. Crude oil, for example, has cost 44 percent less this year on average than it did in the same period of last year in New York trading.

Milk dropped the most out of a dozen items surveyed, according to the bureau. The cost of a gallon of whole milk fell 92 cents to $2.86. Turkey slid 44 cents to $18.65, based on the cost of a 16-pound bird. These two items accounted for most of the overall decline, amounting to $1.70.

U.S. stores are selling whole, 12-pound (5.4-kilogram) turkeys for 40 cents a pound starting today, Walmart said in a statement. That's a third of last Thanksgiving's average price in a survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation in Washington. Starting Nov. 7, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer will sell a Hewlett-Packard Co. notebook computer for $298; a 42-inch (107-centimeters) Sharp Corp. flat-panel TV for $498, down $270 from its regular price, and a 46-inch model, which usually sells for $1,158, for $698, according to Walmart.

The company will cut prices weekly as consumers, pinched by job losses, delay holiday purchases, John Fleming, chief merchandising officer, told analysts Oct. 21. Groceries accounted for 49 percent of U.S. stores sales last year, followed by electronics and other entertainment items, which generated 13 percent of revenue, according to an annual securities filing.

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Walmart said it reduced prices on seven items, including turkey, canned vegetables, cranberry sauce, stuffing, a five-pound bag of red potatoes, dinner rolls and a pumpkin roll cake, for a $20 dinner serving eight people. Thanksgiving, officially the fourth Thursday of November, is on November 26 this year.

Campari also acquired the American Honey liqueur brand along with distilleries and inventory in Kentucky in the deal, the companies said today. The cash acquisition is the Milan- based liquor maker's biggest-ever purchase.

Wild Turkey is the best-selling premium bourbon in the U.S., the world's biggest liquor market, and will add about 100 million euros ($133 million) to Campari's annual sales. The acquisition will help earnings in its first year, Chief Executive Officer Bob Kunze-Concewitz said in an interview.

"This is a very good deal for Campari, even paying at the top of the range as they have," Phil Rudman, an analyst at Exane BNP Paribas in London, said in an interview. " They are really beefing up their exposure to the States. This brand has great potential." Rudman has a "neutral" rating on Campari.

One of the more unusual questions handled by Butterball's Turkey Talk-Line (which the company has operated since 1981) comes from those who have mistaken a well-traveled joke for an actual recipe: They call to ask if they can pop popcorn in the turkey's cavity during the roasting process. (The joke's punch line is: "You know the turkey is done when the popcorn pops and blows the rear off the bird.") And no, you can't.

The hotline has heard from a gal who couldn't find the turkey she buried in a snowbank, a guy who wanted to know how to carve his bird with a chain saw, and a mechanic who worried about using motor oil as a baste.

Then there was the young mother who failed to notice her children playing near the oven-ready bird. The kids decided the turkey's cavity was a good place to park toy cars. Their mom didn't discover Ol' Tom was doubling as a garage until after the turkey had been roasted.