Have you noticed the size of fried chicken at Kentucky Fried Chicken is smaller than usual? That’s because the chicken shortage has forced the poor birds to be slaughtered earlier in order to meet the local demand. Yes, Malaysia is currently facing the food crisis, and chicken is the latest candidate of food shortage that plagues the country, forcing PM Ismail Sabri to act.
The prime minister announced on Monday (May 23) after a Cabinet meeting that effective June 1, the country will stop the export of 3.6 million whole chickens a month until production and prices stabilise. At the same time, more overseas abattoirs will be recognised to boost the country’s chicken supply. PM Ismail also said the government would look into creating a buffer stock of chicken.
The latest move was taken after the government decided in the last Cabinet meeting (May 18) to scrap – temporarily – the AP (“approved permit”) requirement to import food into the country, affecting round cabbage, old coconut seeds, chicken (chicken cuttings and round chicken) and milk. However, the Agriculture and Food Industry Ministry says importers must still have an IP (import permit).
In other words, after a week the “approved permit (AP)” was cancelled, hawkers were still facing problems getting chickens for their businesses. Actually, as government-controlled news media celebrated the abolishment of AP, little was reported that “only four” specific types of agro-food commodities are no longer subject to AP. Other food items such as rice still requires AP.
This means the government is merely fire-fighting and isn’t solving the long-term problem of food security. To make matters worse, the prime minister admits the existence of “cartels” that control the price and production of chicken among large companies. The cartels basically refer to middlemen who manipulate supply and prices in order to profiteering.
So, on top of IP (import permit) you have AP (approved permit), and on top of AP you have Cartel. While it’s understandable that IP is needed for the purpose of biosecurity control at the country’s entry points, exactly why do you need AP, which breeds cartels? The AP is nothing but another layer of profiteering specifically created by the government to enrich cronies.
But the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional government was not done with sucking people’s hard-earned money with AP, which normally awarded to big guns or elite cronies. Little Napoleons of government agencies would conspire among themselves to get a slice of the profit for themselves – the “Cartels”. The government knew about the cartels, but chooses to close one eye for decades.
Basically, while the IP allows the government to earn taxes from imports, the AP helps politicians’ families and friends to earn billions from just a piece of paper. The food price is further inflated with the cartels, who work hand-in-glove with government officials, just like how the underground “meat cartel” distributes fake halal beef and passed off the horse and kangaroo meat as beef to Malaysian Muslims for the last 40 years.
Blaming the U.S. interest rate hike and Russian invasion of Ukraine for the current food shortages are just lame and lazy for the self-inflicted food crisis. In truth, chicken shortage or price hikes happen every year – without fail – especially during festive season like Chinese New Year or Hari Raya festivals, despite the fact that the country is a chicken exporter.
Who do you think deliberately squeezes the supply of chicken during the annual festivals to create an artificial shortage, leading to price increases? It was like Saudi Arabia facing a shortage of gasoline or New Zealand ran out of dairy products, which will never happen. Chicken is just the latest casualty. Previously, the country faced a shortage of vegetables, despite exporting it to Singapore.
Heck, there were also shortages of essentials such as cooking oil, sugar and rice in the past. It’s both shameful and deplorable that a country that produces vegetables, palm oil, sugar and rice could not guarantee food security for its population of just 33 million. The entire population would have been starved to death if the current UMNO government is put in charge of China’s 1.4 billion people.
But quantity of food isn’t the only problem plaguing this country. The “quality” of food has also been consistently deteriorating. For example, when was the last time you saw “Washington Apples” being displayed in supermarkets like AEON? When the fruit became too expensive due to weak purchasing power of Ringgit, it was replaced by the more affordable Fuji Apples – from China.
Now, even the Fuji Apples have become a premium product. Pasar malam (night market), which used to sell Fuji apples, has been reduced to selling smaller-size apples of unknown origins. This means the people are being fed with leftover or inferior food products. Top quality chicken, pork, vegetables, “Musang King” durian, mangosteen and whatnot are exported overseas like Singapore and China.
On the surface, it seems like a good idea that current UMNO government has banned the export of 3.6 million chickens. But it would not have had happened if the government did not practice corruption, cronyism, nepotism, racism and discrimination. The ban will definitely reduce the country’s earnings, indirectly affecting the value of local currency – “Ringgit”.
Malaysia exported more than 49 million live chickens in 2020, as well as 42.3 tonnes of chicken and duck meat. Singapore imported almost 73,000 tonnes of chicken in 2021 – more than a third of its chicken supply – from the country. Thanks to the ban, which can be avoided in the first place, Singapore has to buy from other countries like Brazil – currency exchange loss to Malaysia.
Why the chicken crisis can be avoided? Turtle-egg Sabri said he was disappointed with the actions of some companies that had stopped the supply of chicken, causing an increase in prices and a lack of supply in the market. But was it really the fault of local poultry operators alone that triggered the shortage of chicken, or was it the incompetence and inefficiency of the government itself?
The government has imposed a ceiling price of RM8.90 per kg for chickens since Feb 5. On the same date, the Agriculture and Food Industries Ministry has offered a subsidy of RM729.43 million to chicken breeders through the “Keluarga Malaysia Maximum Price Control Scheme” because Sabri administration knew the breeders could barely survived after factoring in rising production costs.
Hence, the ceiling price was imposed “before” the Ukraine war, which began in Feb 24. However, it was only after the chicken crisis exploded that the government admitted only RM50 million of subsidies of the RM729.43 million due have been paid out to breeders so far. Why did the agriculture ministry drag its feet in the subsidy payment, leading to poultry farmers halting output?
Obviously, the delay in government subsidy payouts could be due to corrupt officials in the agriculture ministry trying to “siphon” the fund elsewhere, or simply working with cartels to create a shortage. The Federation of Livestock Farmers’ Associations of Malaysia (FLFAM) has denied that breeders were deliberately holding back the supply of chickens.
If indeed the poultry farmers were guilty, the government can easily charge them under current laws, failing which is proof the clueless PM Ismail Sabri has screwed up. Still, the fact that the country’s poultry sector has easily collapsed after a handful of livestock farm decided to cease production for 2 days (May 21 and 22) speaks volumes about how fragile the food security is.
At certain markets in the Klang Valley, wholesale prices have reportedly soared to around RM13 per kg, while some stalls were said to have closed due to a lack of supply. That’s a whopping 46% more than the ceiling price of RM8.90 per kg. This begs the question whether the government actually knew how to tackle the shortage of chicken, or had been sleeping on the job till it was too late.
Yet, the clueless Economic Affairs Minister Mustapa Mohamed and Finance Minister Zafrul said the country’s inflation, which claimed to be at 2.2% in March, is under control. In fact, both incompetent ministers have self-praised the current backdoor government for doing an excellent job in keeping the inflation low. If that’s true, why PM Sabri was running around like a headless chicken during the chicken shortage?
If the chicken price could be stabilized by simply creating a buffer stock of chicken, why wasn’t it done ages ago? The shortage of chicken is not the only food crisis, and will certainly not be the last. Annually, the country spends over RM50 billion in importing basic foodstuffs such as rice (30%), beef (78%), lamb (almost 90%) and cabbage (60%). That’s a lot of foreign exchange losses.
From importing cars to exporting chickens, and from police force to dubious meat, Malaysia is the only country in the world that has a comprehensive web of approved permits and cartels to enrich cronies and elites. Worse, instead of improving food security, certain state governments would deploy thuggish method to destroy farm owners due to excessive greed.
For example, vegetable farmers in Cameron Highlands, located in the state of Pahang, are not given any chance to own farm land. Mr Kee, whose family has been toiling on for about 30 years, is the second-generation farmer who paid an annual RM2,250 (RM900 per acre) of “temporary occupation licence” (TOL) fee to the state government to grow spring onion, corn and chillies on the 1-hectar land.
The TOL needs to be renewed annually and farmers are at the mercy of politicians and middle persons who have connections to the district Land and Mines Office – they have the authority to approve or reject their applications for renewal of their TOLs. On top of that, the farmers faced issues of encroachment, land clearance and even intimidation to pay under-the-table bribes.
In March 2020, right after the return of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) through the backdoor government of Muhyiddin Yassin, the Pahang state government introduced a new land policy. Instead of fixed TOL rate, the farming land would be leased to the development arm of the state – the Pahang State Development Corporation – and then rented to farmers at RM4,500 per acre per year.
From RM900 per acre, all the farmers now need to fork out RM4,500 per acre annually – an increase of 500% – under the new rent-seeking policy. It was already bad that land insecurity has prevented farmers from investing in new infrastructure and equipment to improve his farming technology. It has now become worse as the rise in land lease would make it even more difficult for farmers to maintain their farms.
The increase in cost of farming as a result of the government’s increase of land lease price will be passed down to consumers, contributing to inflation. The same Pahang state was also responsible for the crisis of Musang King durians in 2020 when the Royal Pahang Durian Resources was formed to seize the crown jewel of durians from farmers under the pretext of evicting illegal farmers.
But when the Court of Appeal granted the durian farmers a stay against their eviction, the vengeful and shortsighted business arm of the Pahang royal family stunningly ordered the state forestry department to cut down a jaw-dropping 15,000 Musang King trees in an area measuring 101 hectares in the forest reserve – a violation of the court order.
The arrogant Pahang state government had even bragged that they managed to chop down all the trees in 9 days against the estimation 30 days, not realizing their action has cost tremendous losses to both the farmers as well as the country’s earnings. The stupid self-inflicted action has created a shortage of Musang King, leading to 100% increase in the durian prices this year.
Arguably, the chicken shortage is just the beginning of a much bigger food crisis. Ismail Sabri should spend more time worrying about the country’s food security than whining about making the Malay language (“Bahasa Melayu”) lingua franca in the region. Nobody cares about the language if they can’t even put food on the table. The prime minister will suffer the public anger if the current food crisis is allowed to escalate.
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May 25th, 2022 by financetwitter
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To study this yet another crisis in Bolehland, one must first resolve the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg.
Of course it is the egg. The Turtle Egg to be precise.
As Sleepy Sabrina comes first, the country must dutifully throw its lot behind PM Lowyatkob, never mind the chickens, what have the chickens done for Malaisesia, anyway?
In his short reign of our sh*thole country destroyed by apartheid rule, Sleepy egghead Sabrina has done plenty for the country, and there’s ample evidence of that: haven’t you guys seen that video clip of Sabrina during the floods, picked up a shovel, lifted up a bit of dirt, and immediately handed it back to his PR minder? The bunch of attendent rambutan polishers (ccokscukers) were afraid the hard work might cripple the dead-looking frail PM. So, that big event sums up the total of Shovel Sabrina’s very active life thus far in his entire reign.
To be fair, our monkeys in politics (“opposition” included) aren’t designed to do any real work, Sabrina did his year’s worth, like I say. The cameras were there to record his achievement, and glory to Ketuanan. Compared to his predecessor Shorty Niamahaidin, at least Sabrina didn’t spend a lifetime sat inside the loo attending to the ceaseless flood caused by his leaky arseh*le spewing liquid fertiliser.
I won’t call a shortage of chicken any crisis. The immediate benefit of that, and a blessing, would be our monkeys would be spared having to devour unhealthy chickens all pumped up with growth chemicals, antibiotics, and ready for the shops in an incredibly short time. The Chinese speak of killing the chickens to frighten the monkeys, but unfortunately, our monkeys aren’t exactly cautious about pigging our seriously tainted chickens. So long as the chickens are cheap cheep and the size big, it’s fine, our monkeys do not know anything of any fowl play. I can see these days the chickens are only slightly large pigeons.
I may sound fussy but our chickens taste weird, not that our monkeys can discern taste and taste. Thankfully, our monkeys throw in all sorts of chemicals to make their tasteless chickens a magical creation. I suspect if you chuck recycled newspaper into your pot and add those chemicals, that would taste a great chicken feast too. I believe those noisy guys wandering the neighbourhoods collecting newspapers have been doing that for their special chicken creations than getting near no money for the paper recycling.
Newspaper recycled comes back as tissue paper, bog paper… But then a fair proportion of our monkeys use their fingers to clean themselves so the market for bog rolls aren’t that big. But however you clean yourselves, it is disturbing that for some their chickens taste finger lickin’ good.
It shouldn’t but improve health if our chickens are taken off the menu. In fact, all meat should be banned, famous fake halal meat production included. I’m not into animal rights, animal liberation, veganism, and all that… but hormones turning a nine-year old into a bride, manboobs, obesity, blah makes me uncomfortable. I’ve every right, as tax-payer to say that, I’d be paying for your medical bills and hospital stay if you indulge yourself in rubbish food and make others suffer in all sense of the word. Those grotesque fatsos blocking the pavements is an eyesore and pain for others, and we are getting more and more of the grossly overweight and at younger age. The better specimens of these die unusually earlier in their short miserable life, we can call that a favour to the nation they are not on permanent medication or life support or clog up the hospitals – all paid for by lucky you.
I won’t be hard on Lowyatkob, if it not him fcuking things up when he’s awake, there would be other fooly-qualified clueless, witless, useless wonders from Klub Ketuanan fcuking things up in Lowyatkob’s place. Mind you, there are also such species among the arseh*les in the “opposition” who can do an equally great job fcuking things up, including quickly fcuking themselves out of power after winning the last election specially for their foreign masters and for their revered deity Snake Pharaoh M for Memali Monster.
We can’t expect monkeys to run the zoo, getting Bolehland industrialised rather than remaining agricultural was and is a huge disaster. We had many decades to get our crap industrial wonder Proton right and until the Chinese uncles came and performed a miracle on it, the car designed as a rubbish origami coffin on four cheap tyres was a perpetual lossmaker on a grand scale. The right path for Malaisesia is to follow an agricultural path entirely, leave even making metal buckets to the big boys, say, can you beat China even at this game? When industry in Malaisesia kicked the bucket, it had to buy the bucket from China! Remember we had a steel industry that was another fcuking disaster, and it too kicked the plastic bucket!
Once upon a time we could grow rice. Now we can only eat rice near entirely produced by other countries. We grow nearly nothing and our monkeys in agriculture are barren in their heads of any idea to make us self-sufficient in at least a few crops. The only thing we, or our migrant slave labour can grow no end of is oil palm and oil palm! A couple of the idle rich friends of mine wanted to grow rice on a big scale in Bolehland, they encountered endless stumbling blocks of our useless bureaucrats, fake experts and got nowhere with their patriotism and concern for food self-sufficiency.
We don’t need to import chickens. But with our corrupt and useless monkeys fcuking anything up as usual, we do. And the monkeys in gomen have set us up for a future of dependency on other countries, parasitic behaviour living off the labour of mostly the nons has turned into a big nasty habit for the “chosen wans” – open the big mouth and food is expected to be stuffed in. Even at present time, should there be a serious shortage of food, it will hit us bad on all front, let alone just for chickens. The monkeys in gomen are blissfully unaware a shortage of food is not just about starvation, it usually causes mass migration – and wars. Wars mean killing, your best friend can kill you to grab food for his children – even after church on Sunday!
It won’t be about APs and deals for the cronies, food riots can mean the monkeys in gomen get strung off trees, and, maybe beheaded. You’ve seen images of the starving in Africa on their murderous rampage, there’s nothing that says we are any different – we are not more civilised than others comes any food riot, don’t flatter yourselves you are “better”. If you are better, you won’t be screaming for death to others threatening anyone with a keris at the slightest “offence”, fer fcuks sake!
I have, as always, zero confidence the monkeys in gomen will be able to solve any food crisis without causing even more crises. We will be having more shortages of more things in the coming months, so there is going to be plenty of opportunities for the monkeys in gomen to guarantee more disasters. The gomen must dig in with a tough stance to tackle any crisis head-on, and thankfully, Shovel Sabrina knows how to dig wan shovel’s worth for the trench or his burial patch when the riot starts.
Hunger and starvation is the same for every stomach and no one will give a fcuk about having to express those in the polished Ketuanan Pidginspeak, if you demand that, you’ll get your keris shoved up your “supremacist” arse! If it were me, I would use my sense to postpone promoting our bullsh*t “language” and making the world puke on it, make better use of sense and of time, grab all the fcuking chickens, fill up our strategic granaries – looks like we don’t even have those, so expect food riots then!
Have to say Ketuanan Cina has done a mighty brilliant job preparing for shortages, some four years ago, the Chinese have been cornering, hoarding and stockpiling food. I have to take my songkok off, praise the Chinese for their ability to predict, plan, and deal with food shortages. I think the Chinese must have better bomohs, could see a worldwide disaster coming.
So here’s a great opportunity to benefit from the yet another disaster coming soon to a fcuked up sh*thole country right where you are, our ketuanan can crawl to Ketuanan Cina and humbly beg our big bros for help. As opposed to our crap “opposition” who are beholden to the neocon masters in the US and their grandpa Georg Sorrows, Ketuanan Cina has plenty of dosh whereas the US hasn’t even got baby formula, and are fast headed, like most Western countries, for a crash of their economies and societies. Won’t just be those with fetish with guns shooting school kids, there would be shooting wars over hunger, civil war, where them doods shoot each other over the slightest nothing.
I do agree not having their KFC may cause our monkeys serious withdrawal symptoms when they withdraw their month’s pay to feast on their beloved chickens which will not be on the table. And their cold turkey treatment may not work, with our poor health service, it can only be a fowl-up like usual.
I’d urge Sleepy Sabrina to get his chickenshit ketuanan right, make absolutely no mistake for once about his task and responsibility to sort out the food and everything else shortages, no failure, with his dodgy, hapless, and clueless headless chicken leadership, disasters loom, there would be failures everywhere, the chickens will be coming home to roost!
I would hope Lowyatkob not chicken out of his epic chicken hunt quest to round up all the chickens he can lay hands on. We don’t want the chickens to become an endangered species like them turtles and our future generations not know what a chicken is. Sleepy Sabrina may, if he fails, become an endangered species himself if Ketuanan fcuks up especially for the chosen wans.
I hope someone would do a Google Translate job on what I wrote, I’m not half-bothered about writing in that Bahahasa “language”, a crap Google translation works out the same, maybe better than the crap unoriginal “language”… If you announce in our pidginspeak that we are not going to get chickens, do you think that would sound better, and people would be deliriously happier?