The Irony Of Things #4

According to "Strange Foods" by Jerry Hopkins, wild horses in America faced a threat of being endangered because they had to compete for water and forage with grazing cattle. The U.S. Bureau of Land management then ran a program to protect wild horses on public lands. "Excess horses" were rounded up and offered to the public for adoption. The governmnet spent more than US$1,000 to collect, vaccinate, brand, and administer the paperwork for each horse. And adopters pay US$125 for a healthy horse. The new "parent" agreed to keep the animals for at least one year. Some did, many didn't, most selling them for slaughter eventually, for about US$700 apiece. Since the program started in 1982, more than 165,000 animals have been rounded up, costing over $250 million.

Ironically, this sudden supplies boosted demand and the horse meat industry in the US.


MAKES PERFECT SENSE

In Chinese, the words for "crisis" and "opportunity" are the same. It introduces the phrase "A person's career opportunity is the fruit of another's crisis."