In case you were in any doubt about the diverse tastes that exist on our planet, this snippet will put them to bed.
One of Asia’s most sought-after beauty products, in the form of a soup, believed to be good for the skin, is bird-nest soup. Sounds a bit grosteque, and a rather dry, brittle, tasteless experience, until it is revealed that the nests are Swiflet nests and are spun from saliva! (any better?) Bird nest soup is a very lucrative business in China and people are willing to pay up to $100 just for a handful portion. However, because of the demand, counterfeit products h?ave flooded the market and are causing safety concerns. Last July China stopped all exports from Malaysia, their second biggest supplier of the delicacy. The Malaysian agricultural ministry says its edible bird’s nest industry is worth RM5B (over €1bn). Counterfeit bird’s nests have also affected producers like Yanming Resources. At its factory in Kuala Lumpur, more than a dozen women sift through the delicacy strand by strand. Each worker is armed with a set of tweezers to pull out every piece of feather and speck of dirt. The final product can only contain saliva.
Counterfeiting has caused Asia to invest in a technology known as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) to boost consumer confidence. RFID allows a product to be easily traced from source to the consumer. The technology is similar to a barcode system, but is more difficult to duplicate.
With RFID, every step of the laborious process, from harvesting to packaging, is tagged. The data is stored centrally with the government. “In essence the RFID becomes a certificate of authenticity”, says Yow Lock Sen, who is in charge of overseeing the government project.
The system is still being perfected, but eventually customers who have safety concerns will be able to trace the origins of the product by simply downloading a free app onto a smartphone, and scanning the RFID tag on the product.
Although it is a government research project, participation from the industry is voluntary since it requires companies to buy the RFID tags and reading equipment. Yanming Resources’s Chua Huai Gen says it’s a good investment. “With the RFID technology, consumers will know that they are getting the real thing, so we can mark up our prices by 50%,” he says.

The Chinese name for bird’s nest soup is, yàn wō (燕窝), translated literally as “swallow’s nest”.

I will be looking at the swallow’s nests in my garage with renewed interest from now on.