(Image: Ian Teh/Panos)

A BOWL of soup made with animal saliva? Yours for $100. What’s that, you want some of the raw ingredients so that you can make your own? That’ll be $2000 per kilogram, please.

Bird’s nest soup is one of the most expensive foods in the world. Its production is a mega-industry, worth an incredible $5 billion a year. The nests were traditionally harvested from caves in South-East Asia where the birds – the edible-nest swiftlet, Aerodramus fuciphagus, and the black-nest swiftlet, Aerodramus maximus – make their nests. The natural supply is no longer enough to keep up with demand, however.

One business solution is to build concrete bird houses (pictured). These, in a cornfield in Selangor, Malaysia, are fitted with electronic tweeters playing swiftlet calls to attract the birds. Inside the structures, male swiftlets meticulously build their nests over 35 days, coughing up thick phlegmy strands of spit to bind it. The nests are often harvested before eggs are laid, so the birds build more.


(Image: Xiaofei Wang/Corbis)

Dissolved in water to produce a glutinous mixture containing, apparently, magnesium, calcium, iron and potassium, the soup (pictured below) is claimed to keep you young, improve your focus, and – as these things always do – boost your libido. “It’s often served cold, and the liquid is clear with slightly fibrous strands that are an opaque white colour,” says photographer Ian Teh. “I had it when I was a kid and rather liked it.”

This article appeared in print under the headline “Nested interests”