‘Dead chickens were meant to be turned into catfish feed’

GEORGE TOWN: Maybe it was how some social media scaremongers thought of greeting the Year of the Rooster.

Someone took pictures of a lorry full of dead chickens parked in a petrol station and shared them on social media networks, accusing farmers of selling the carcasses.

The pictures went on Facebook as early as Tuesday and migrated to phone chat groups by Wednesday, heavily embellished with claims that the carcasses – feathers and all – were sold for RM2 each to chicken rice, nasi kandar and Indian food shops.

But one look at the pictures and Fisheries Research Institute research officer Chuah Hean Peng knew what was going on.

“The carcasses are being sent to catfish farms. They will be sanitised in huge pressure cookers before being used as farm-made feed,” he said.

He explained that this was how catfish feed has been made for decades before commercial feed became available in the 1980s.

“Catfish are natural carrion eaters but the Fisheries Department encourages catfish farmers to use commercial pellets instead of cheaper farm-made feed,” he said.