Cleaning 'wet markets'

-- Singapore has finally found a way to clean up its "wet markets", the bazaars selling fresh meat, fish and poultry. They are named so because their floors are perpetually slippery with offal and blood, fish scales, and water. The government has been tearing its hair out, but it could do nothing as people protested vehemently every time there was a move to ban the markets. The wet bazaars are important centres of Singapore's culture, they argued. But now the government is determined to launch high-tech farming and animal husbandry. It has created 8 agrotechnological parks stretching over 1,700 hectare of government land, where fish are bred in aquariums, and hydroponic dairy, poultry, and vegetable farms have been set up. Hydroponics is vital for Singapore's continued wellbeing since the country's land is too precious to be wasted on obsolete farming systems.