Crocodile eggs up for sales on local market

With the growing global market for crocodile products, the country’s lone crocodile farm is now offering such products in the local market on a limited scale alongside its exports abroad.
The Reptiles Farm Ltd now offers crocodile eggs, teeth, and live crocodiles for the local market on a limited scale through online marketing.
The crocodile products were put in one of the online portals, celbazaar.com, on Saturday as the company put the offer, ‘The country’s only commercial crocodile farm registered with CITES is making available a small quantity of crocodile eggs. You can eat these eggs like any other eggs; you can make Moghlai Parata or even Pizza if you want.’ The farm also assured to provide recipes on request.
Most of the viewers of the online advertisement were curious about such products, especially the eggs, and many left lamenting comments for the high price.
The farm is offering crocodile eggs at Tk 1,200 a piece, crocodile tooth at Tk 50,000 a piece and baby crocodile at Tk 1,50,000.
The farm’s managing director, Mushtaque Ahmed, told New Age that he received an overwhelming response and most of them were curious about eggs as it was the cheapest item.
‘We actually do not market such products locally. On a test basis we had advertised to sell some unfertile-eggs as we felt there are many people curious about non-conventional items. I think most of the people are interested in keeping the eggs as souvenirs,’ he said.
Many of them also inquired about crocodile teeth and few wanted to know how they would keep a crocodile as a pet, Mushtaque said.
‘Although crocodile eggs are edible but such an idea is still a cultural shock here. And I think few would be interested in eating an egg at Tk 1,200,’ he added.
The farm began its journey in 2004 with 75 crocodiles, ranging from 7 feet to 12 feet in length, imported from Malaysia for commercial breeding at a cost of Tk 1.25 crore.
It made its first shipment of crocodile export worth $100,000 on June 4, 2010 to Heidelberg University of Germany for research purpose.
Mushtaque said that they had set up the farm with the objective of exporting over 5,000 crocodile skins annually and creating the means for earning up to $5 million by 2015.
Various countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, have shown interest in importing crocodile skins from the farm, he said, and expressed the hope that they would be able to export 500 crocodile skins annually within next two or three years.

Via: NewAge