There is a hue and cry that chicken meat is selling at Rs250 per kg whereas mutton and beef is selling at two to three times higher rate than chicken meat. When chicken meat was selling below cost of production at Rs80 per kg, there was no noise being raised for the price. It is presumed that people are not thankful that chicken meat is so low-cost which is far superior to red meat as it causes uric acid problems. Even the Holy Quran says that flesh of birds would be served in “Jannat”, and not beef or mutton.
When chicken is now cheaper than even daal, we have to be thankful to poultry producers who rough out between high and lows of chicken meat prices while surviving by their knuckles. Poultry is a highly sensitive industry as birds are prone to a host of diseases against which they have to be protected by costly vaccines and medicines while red meat production is conventional that can’t be mass produced. However mass production techniques have been deployed in poultry industry which has made it possible for even poor people to have chicken soups. We ought to be thankful to poultry people for producing highly nutritious food otherwise even donkeys and sick animals are being slaughtered and fed to unsuspecting people in our country.
DR MUHAMMAD YAQOOB BHATTI
Lahore
