For Thailand, the event signaled the resumption of chicken export to the Middle East, suspended since 2005 at the height of the region's bird fl u epidemic. From 1969to 2005, the kingdom had been exporting chicken to the Middle East, particularly Kuwait. But in an industry where 90 percent of its overseas shipment goes to Japan and the European Union, that market was a cog in the wheel then, so to speak.

No one should fault anyone if this time the shipment's departure had the making of a victory party, where no less than the agriculture minister and other industry bigwigs like the president and other members of the Thai Broiler Processing Exporters Association and the chief executive officer of CPF, Adirek Sripratak, were there totoast the champagne.

Over the last few years, food exporters around the globe had been talking about it as if it were a newly discovered continent. Trade promotion offi cials from Canada, Singapore to New Zealand, the Philippines to Turkey, Malaysia to Australia speak about its huge, almost limitless potential as a market. Canada goes far beyond by calling it a "threshold" of great things to come.

No doubt it is. The global food imports of the Islamic world - often referred to as the Halal market - are estimated to be US$80 billion, about 12 percent of total trade in agri-food products. Other estimates put it at US$150-US$200 billion. By lumping it up with the kosher market in Israel, Thailand even thinks the Halal trade is worth US$590 billion a year.

Now approaching 1.6 billion people, the Islamic world has one of the world's fastest-growing populations. By 2025, it is expected to account for 30 percent of the world's total and 20 percent of world food trade. And with oil price in an all-time high of over US$120 a barrel - and still rising - it's not hard to figure out why food exporting countries are suddenly agog over the Halal market dominated by the oil-rich countries of the Middle East.