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Thursday, 18 November 2010

LONG-LOST NEWS: Chicken Soup Balm For Asian Markets?

By Steve Kemp

Wednesday, December 31, 1997
Ocean Beach, California (iSpam news service) - One and a half million dead chickens may actually serve to boost weakened Asian markets, according to a joint press release issued today by the Securities and Futures Commission and the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong has slaughtered the fowls trying to quell the spread of the influenza virus A H5N1, which has long attacked ducks, geese and chickens but crossed into humans for the first time this year.

The press release noted,

"While the ongoing slaughter of chickens does have a certain limited local impact on the chickens, there may be a silver lining.

In the process of solving the problem of just what to do with a mountain of poultry carcasses, it soon to became apparent that there would be a surfeit of feathers and other valuable by-products including use as poultry feed, which of course will be in great demand as we strive to re-populate the poultry market."

International health observers hastened to point out the bad experience of beef farmers who fed cow parts to their herds of cattle which was held responsible for mad cow disease. But Hong Kong financial pundits dismiss these concerns as counter-revolutionary.

The press release went on to say that Asian entrepreneurs were already making inquiries about the poultry byproducts, including queries from Australia and South Korea.

Making the most of the up side of down, an Australian startup has been founded by two students of Charles Sturt University in Darwin, Australia. The pair, graduates of marketing, global trade and environmental management, have targeted the tourists of Mount Evelyn, near Darwin, as the pilot market for a product named the Crook Chook Down Vest, designed for cold weather high-altitude mountain trekkers.

Commerce-hungry South Korea is showing an interest in poultry as poultry feed. The cities of Seoul, Pusan and Taegu are prodigious producers of chicken and have already dedicated an internet website called Korean Chicken Home, where the potentially burgeoning market for poultry-fed chicken by starving North Koreans is characterized as "mouth watering.”

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