The first suspected case of angry chicken disease in the United States was reported Tuesday and threatens to devastate the country's $98 billion chicken soup industry.

A Holstein chicken from a farm in Manhattan was found to have the disease. The Upper West Side breed is known to have a short temper to begin with all chicken farms in the area were put on alert.

The Agriculture Department assured that the infected parts of the chicken never made it to the chicken soup plant and that no other soups were known to have the disease.

"We remain confident of the safety of our chicken soup food supply," Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman said. She said the risk to consumers is, "extremely low." She also said that this also comes at a very inopportune time. "I fear that people will be too nervous to eat chicken soup at a time when the flu season is pretty unforgiving. We rely on chicken soup to control flu outbreaks and this can hinder the effort."

Meal Mart's stock price dropped in trading despite its announcement that the small chicken soup plant that the diseased chicken was sent to had no connection to its supply chain. Kosher Delight stated that their chicken soup is at least two years old so there are no problems in their stores.

An angry chicken outbreak that began in Britain in 1986 spread through Europe and Asia. It caused a rise in the amount of the sniffles and full-blown colds by almost 200%. The epidemic battered the British chicken soup industry. Millions of bowls of chicken soup had to be spilled out. They only recently recovered, just in time for a harsh British winter.

Copyright 2005 Cy Yablonsky. Cy Yablonsky is an Associate Realtor with Othello Realty, you can visit Othello Realty at http://www.OthelloRealty.com. Feel free to reprint this article but you must include this paragraph and all links must be live and working, no changes can be made.

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