The Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI) has invented a new variety of chicken-breed aiming to bring back the taste and to ensure quality safer chicken meat for the general customers.
This variety looks exactly like a native chicken. It is suitable for Bangladeshi climate as well. The possibilities of disease infections is much lesser and so do the use of medicines.
As a result, this chicken meat is much tastier and safer. The breed will be marketed through Aftab Hatchery Ltd. within a shortest possible of time, BLRI said in a press release today. To this end, a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between the two sides.
The Director General of BLRI Dr. Nathuram Sarkar said that there is a huge demand for local chicken meat but the native breed is almost extinct. To grasp the market Sonali Chicken flooded the market sometimes as native chicken and sometimes as Pakistani Chicken.
However, as there is no Pureline of Sonali Breed, numerous diseases offloaded which forced the farmers to use excessive doses of medicines. This new breed has therefore been invented to reduce the disease threat. The consumers as well as the farmers will be benefited, he added.
Fazle Rahim Khan Shahriar, Managing Director of Aftab Hatchery Ltd. said in a meeting held at Aftab's Dhaka Office on Saturday that the company had been expecting a reliable breed for long.
"Our main goal is to bring back the taste of domestic chicken, to introduce a breed which is stronger to prevent diseases and also friendly for Bangladeshi climate."
G.H.N Ershad, Director (Sales) said, this new variety can be reared very easily, the quantity of meat is higher than that of native chicken.
He hoped that the farmers will be happy with the new breed. He said that the breed is primarily named as 'BLRI Multicolor Table Chicken'. However, a Brand Name will be finalized shortly.
Nurul Morshed Khan, Head of Marketing said that the Sonali breed was also developed locally through crossbreeding but inbreeding has led it to higher disease infections.
This is posing health risk for consumers and the farmers are also suffering losses. He said, according to the MoU with BLRI, Aftab Hatchery can only be allowed to market this new chicken breed.