Welcome to the first edition of "The Stirling Connection". You will find the newsletter a source of information not only about Stirling Products the company, but also topical issues that confront the biotechnology sector and more specifically those associated with Stirling's business operations.

The intent of this newsletter is two-fold. Firstly, we want to provide a forum for exchange with our current shareholders in the interest of keeping them better informed on the activities of the Company. Secondly, we want to provide a mechanism for imparting knowledge in areas and topics that affect the biotechnology and animal health industry. Biotechnology in general still suffers from a "Frankenstein" image, much of which is born out of a lack of knowledge and understanding.

At the recent AusBiotech Conference held in Perth in November there was a general commitment across the biotechnology companies in Australia that both current and future investors in thebiotechnology sector, could only benefit from a greater understanding of the challenges that this industry faces. If "The Stirling Connection" provides a forum to impart some knowledge with which the public perception becomes based on factual assessment, then it will have been a worthwhile exercise.

In coming editions we will discuss the problems of antibiotic resistance stemming from the widespread use of antibiotics as feed additives and the implications of their removal on global meat production also, understanding growth promotion, understanding biotechnology and other areas of interest. I would appreciate your comments on how you find the newsletter as it evolves and your suggestions for ways in which it could be improved. Email me directly at calvin.london@stirlingproducts.net

Stirling Products re-listed in February 2004 with the aim of developing a series of products that stem from the patented molecule ST810.

ST810 is a chemically purified version of a drug - salbutamol - that has been used in asthma treatment for over 25 years. Salbutamol exists in two forms that are called isomers, thus there is an R-isomer and an S-isomer.

It is a bit like your two hands - your left and right hand. They both look the same, both are capable of doing the same things and are essentially a mirror image of each other. When you shake hands, you do so with your right hand and the person you are shaking hands with, also uses their right hand. The specificity is very precise. Your left hand has little if anything to do with this process and in fact could be viewed as "dead weight".

By purifying the salbutamol molecule so that it only has R-isomers, we can create a molecule that is very specific and very efficient because we are not wasting weight in the S-isomer which has no activity. Thus for ST810 (which is R-salbutamol), the overall benefit is less of the compound delivers more activity than the racemic or mixed version of both R- and S-isomers.

Making molecules in more purified versions like this is referred to as chiral chemistry and is a process that is becoming more prominent in the pharmaceutical industry as a means of extending patent life on effective molecules.

Stirling Products is developing compounds containing ST810 on three different technology platforms:

1. Growth Agents - where small amounts of ST810 produce a reduction in food requirements of animals and result in an increased content of muscle (lean meat) and a reduction of fat. This has clear benefits for the farmer (who saves money by having to provide less food) and for the consumer who gets cuts of meat with "more meat and less fat".
   
   Stirling leads the way in the development of these highly specific, safe and effective alternatives to antibiotics and hormones for growth agents for livestock animals.
   
   
2. Heaves in Horses - Heaves is a respiratory disease in horses caused by an allergic reaction to different factors in the horses' environment. Following the success of salbutamol as a drug to relieve the symptoms in human asthma, Stirling is developing an application for the treatment of heaves in horses, an area in which there does not exist any form of specific inhalation medicine for horses. 
   
   
3. Obesity in companion animals - It has been shown that R-salbutamol lowers the fat content of animals and reduces the rate at which new fat deposits are made. This provides the potential to use ST810 as a means of reducing obesity in the growing number of fat cats and dogs.
   
   There are currently over 150 million dogs and 130 million cats in the world, of which more than 30 and 40 per cent respectively are considered to be overweight or obese.

In a nutshell, this is what Stirling Products does. The Company is working its way through the necessary trials and studies that are required to register the product in major international markets including the United States, Australia and New Zealand, South America and South Africa. Only the applications for heaves and obesity in companion animals have merit in the European markets due to their ban on any form of growth promotion in livestock species. (This topic will be explored in the next edition of "The Stirling Connection").

One for 'The Birds': Wild Turkeys Attack Humans in Suburbia

In April, Mr Millington was riding his dirt bike down a narrow trail in Norman, Okla., when he stopped before a flock of wild turkeys. The hens scattered, but two toms flared their feathers and stalked toward him. Then they suddenly leapt in the air, beat Mr. Millington with their wings and tried to scratch him with the sharp spurs on the backs of their legs.

Mr. Millington frantically revved his bike's motor. Thirty yards down the trail he looked back. "They were running after me," says the 46-year-old property manager. "That was kind of spooky."

As Americans prepare to eat some 46 million domestic turkeys slaughtered for Thanksgiving, their wild cousins are fighting back. The explosion of the wild turkey population to nearly seven million from just 30,000 in the 1930s has put a growing number of humans in the face of angry gobblers.

Patricia Huckery, a Massachusetts Wildlife Department district manager in Acton, west of Boston, says she has gotten 25 calls this year for advice on coping with aggressive turkeys. Last year in Cranford, N.J., a letter carrier killed a turkey with a stick after complaining to police that a flock of turkeys wouldn't let him out of his delivery truck. In Pennsylvania's Montgomery County, wildlife conservation officer Chris Heil says he has had to kill 42 turkeys this year in response to complaints about behavior ranging from attacking a child on a tricycle to scratching cars.

Many bird lovers pooh-pooh stories of threatening behavior.....

Tom turkeys in suburban woods can be 4 feet tall, weigh 25 pounds and run 20 miles per hour for short bursts. Mr. Cardoza, a turkey expert from the Massachusetts Wildlife Agency advises people to show the birds who's boss. One tip is to carry an umbrella to poke at the turkey. Ms. Huckery tells people to "get your broom and swat the turkey away." Other tips for discouraging turkeys include spraying them with a garden hose, yelling and banging pots and pans, and having a dog in the backyard.

Lovett Williams, a Florida biologist, recalls that when he raised wild turkeys, he sometimes had to establish dominance by grabbing an obnoxious bird around the neck and holding it on the ground so it couldn't scratch with its spurs. "I'd slap him like they do on the Three Stooges," he says. "Then they'd wobble around and run off."

Peter Fagan, a charter boat fisherman from Montauk, N.Y., encountered a large tom near his home last spring. Mr. Fagan, who hunts turkeys in the Catskills, says he went out near his home, where turkey hunting is forbidden, to practice his turkey-calling technique. While he was setting up a video camera on a tripod, a tom walked by and buried a spur in his knee, penetrating his thick canvas hunting pants.

Mr. Fagan says he didn't want to hurt the bird so he pushed him away and kept filming as the bird jumped at him again and again. Finally, Mr. Fagan made a cellphone call to a friend and the turkey, apparently alarmed at hearing the other voice, stalked away.....

Last month, jogging on a back road in Massachusetts' Berkshire hills, Betsy Kosheff passed a farmers' field where farm-raised wild turkeys were pecking for grain. Suddenly about 30 of them took off after Ms. Kosheff, who has a public-relations firm in West Stockbridge, Mass.

"It was like that scene in 'The Birds' except there was no phone booth," says Ms. Kosheff, referring to the famous refuge in the Alfred Hitchcock movie. A passing friend stopped her pickup truck and Ms. Kosheff ran around it several times. The turkeys kept up the chase, although she says "they were too stupid to split up or change directions" to trap her. Finally, Ms. Kosheff got in the truck, where, she says, her friend "was laughing so hard she almost choked on her Dunkin' Donut."

(Original article appeared in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 23, 2005; Page A1, By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY)

I guess revenge is sometimes sweet - if you are a turkey. Let's hope that pigeons don't come out on the side of chickens. With 52 billion slaughtered for meat every year, you will have to carry an umbrella for a completely different reason.