"In the aptly named town of Ratchaburi, an hour and a half outside Bangkok, an angry group gathers at a gate of what looks like an average house. It’s October 1999, and they’re demanding that the property owner honor her contracts. But they’re too late, because the woman in question has already fled. These Thai farmers were expecting to complete an unusual business arrangement in which the rat breeder would buy back — at a decent profit — the offspring of rats she’d sold them.
Twenty years ago, rat peddlers convinced poor Thai farmers to purchase and raise river rats, aka coypu, promising big returns from the sale of their fur, meat and other body parts. We’re not talking any old rat cousins — these were nutria, rodents the size of small dogs that look like a cross between a rat and a beaver, complete with webbed feet, white muzzles, huge yellowed teeth and strangely placed nipples.
They were imported into Thailand in the mid-1990s by an unnamed entrepreneurial Taiwanese businessman, according to reports at the time, who capitalized on the booming Thai economy and the appeal of easy wealth in the countryside. Local nutria peddlers bought the rat packs and then sold them to poor farmers, marketing the scheme via billboards and radio announcements. Hundreds responded, and the semiaquatic rats quickly multiplied. At first, the get-rich-quick plan seemed to be working: A rat promoter would sell a pair of breeding rats to a farmer for around 20,000 baht, roughly $500 then, and buy back baby rodents for up to $100 each. Even Thailand’s deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture at the time, Dr. Suthiporn Chirapanda, called it a “very attractive” return. ..."
https://news.yahoo.com/rat-race-went-te ... 00227.html
