“The key to everything is patience. You get the
chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.” Arnold H. Glasow
By Alex P. Vidal
To confirm if there is still “joy” in our
favorite chicken, it pays to move our butts, to explore and discover the truth.
After all, there’s no substitute for an ocular
visit. To see is to believe. There is truth in actual bite.
A most recent check in our favorite fast food
restaurant that specializes in chicken nuggets, hotdogs, fries and hamburger,
among other short meals inside a big mall in La Paz district, Iloilo City
dismissed our fears that the closure of 72 other fast food stores in Metro
Manila the other week would spark a domino effect down the Visayas and Mindanao
areas.
We also confirmed that there was no truth to
rumors that chickens have staged a nationwide walk out and protest, and are no
longer keen to provide us viands and take-out pulutan.
And, yes, there was still “joy” in our chicken;
“chicken joy” was still very much available in the menu.
No chicken boycott. No dietary upheaval. No
closure jitters in the Visayas and Mindanao. No problem.
TEMPORARY
The abrupt closure in Metro Manila, albeit
temporary, sent chilling effects mostly to Ilonggo kids mesmerized not only
with the store’s oily, sweet and cholesterol-inducing meals, but also with the
life-sized worm-like mascot that has captured the imagination of both the
children and grown-ups from all walks of life.
The reason put forward for the temporary closure
was “due to the lack of popular menu items at its outlets.”
“The product limitation has been caused by the
migration to new systems that started on August 1, 2014, which has resulted in
temporary slowdown in sales order taking, product loading and dispatch of
transportation,” the store management said in its statement.
The store and its franchisee partners “express
their apology to their customers for the disappointment and inconvenience
caused by not finding their favorite products in the stores or by seeing their
nearby stores temporarily closed,” the company added in the statement.
BEST
“The organization is doing its best to restore
the availability of all its products to normal levels in the next few days, to
reopen temporarily closed stores and to restore its excellent service to its
customers.”
The issue, it turned out, was not about “chicken
uprising” or shortage of chicken, it was learned. It was about “port
congestion” in Metro Manila, suggested the Department of Agriculture.
There are billions of chicken, a domesticated
fowl, and their population is rapidly growing day by day, thus the issue of
shortage isn’t valid.
In fact, there are more chickens in the world
than any other species of bird. Since time immemorial, humans keep chickens
primarily as a source of food, consuming both their meat and their eggs.
Even the DA has confirmed that there are three
million kilos of surplus chicken in the country and 700,000 kilos of imported
chicken.
FARMS
We learned later that many farms in Southern
Luzon that supplied chicken to Metro Manila were also affected by Typhoon
Glenda (Rammasun), thus forcing the DA to order chicken from farther away
regions, causing delivery delays.
It will take a few months before the supply of
chicken to Metro Manila and nearby provinces will go back to normal, the
agriculture department announced. Chicken prices might only roll back to P120
per kilo in December, it was reported.
There we have it. The real score in as far as
the issue of chicken--and the "joy" of having it on our menu, is
concerned.
The next time our friends will ask if our
chicken still has “joy”, we will know what to answer.
No comments:
Post a Comment