What Really is SASSO? Kabir?: Breaking the Wrong Information

What really is SASSO? Most of us when we hear the word Sasso, we relate it to a big chicken that has more or less the same color as our native chicken. Or a big chicken that has no feathers on it's neckor what we call "cobra". We think of Sasso as a distinct breed of chicken that came from France. The same goes with Kabir which we say came from Israel.  Some of this information are true, but very misleading. The truth is, Sasso and Kabir are just company names rather than breeds of chickens. Us Pinoys have a very unique way of embracing brand/company names and using them to identify a product for our own convenience. A classic example would be: we want to buy toothpaste at a sari-sari store. Instead of saying to the owner we want to buy toothpaste, we say "can i buy colgate? The owner then hands us a tube of close-up, we pay the amount and walk away. Since when did colgate mean toothpaste? Sometimes advertisements become too effective and us Pinoys are sometimes too brand conscious. This is especially true in the provinces where they measure rock salts by "caltik" which is derived from a plastic container from "caltex" that previously contained oil or lubricant. We say "cooks" when we mean Coke and the owner hands us a Pepsi and we're fine (I come from mindanao and these are the examples of what I have encountered). Another classic one would be: can I have this article xeroxed? Xerox is the brand of the machine. Other examples:

Kodakan tayo! -Kodak ( a brand of camera/film) when we mean we want to take pictures

Prigeder-Frigidaire (a brand of refrigerator) when we mean refrigerator

Pahiram ng Crayola- Crayola (a brand of crayons) when we mean crayons

Band-aid -when we mean adhesive wound strips

These are examples of our mistakes to name a few when it comes to too much brand recognition. I included these in this article because Sasso and Kabir exactly belong to this type of errors. Sasso is actually an acronym that stands for Selection Avicole Sud et Sud Oest or poultry selection south and southwest. It is time for us to set things right and correct the wrong notion of our free-range stocks here in the Philippines. As of now, there are only two (2) breeding companies that produce MEAT-TYPE birds that have their strains present here in the Philippines and these are Hubbard and Sasso. Kabir has been long gone in the Philippines so technically, we don't have any Kabir chickens here in the Philippines anymore. The name just got stuck in us because it was one of the first big chicken strains that got here. As for Bounty Fresh, we get our stocks from Hubbard which is a company of Groupe Grimaud from France. Just like Sasso and Kabir, Hubbard has different strains/products under their name. If you compare it to big companies like Coca-Cola, which has diet coke, coke light, coke zero, sprite, Royal, etc., Hubbard and Sasso has the same. They have fast-grow, medium-grow, slow-grow, naked neck, barred, red, black, etc. strains of chickens to cater to different market conditions. So, it is wrong for us to associate a big colored bird immediately as Sasso, Kabir, or Hubbard. For us, we are only selling two types of product from Hubbard. This is the Redbro and the Redbro naked neck males that we crossed to the JA57Ki females that would give us RedJA and RedJA naked neck or what we sell bounty fresh free-range chicken and bounty fresh free-range naked neck chicken. So the next time around, when you see or somebody sees a big colored chicken, you would think twice about calling them Sasso or Kabir right then and there. It is time for us to correct the damage brought about by the wrong information campaign from the past for the benefit of the free-range chicken industry here in our country.