U.N. To Sell Dogs - Hot Dogs That Is

The United Nations has cooked up (quite literally) an unusual initiative to heighten public awareness of global poverty:

The world's most expensive hot dog will go on sale in Stockholm as part of a United Nations-sponsored event aimed at highlighting the problem of poverty as world leaders gather at the UN summit in New York.

Hot dogs and veggie dogs will be sold in downtown Stockholm for 999 Swedish kronor (132 dollars, 107 euros) a piece, said Klas Waldenstroem, a spokesman for the United Nations Development Programme's Nordic office.

"The goal is to highlight world poverty during the UN summit in New York by using a simple metaphor -- the customary Swedish 'korv' (hot dog) -- to show people here what it would be like to live life without having enough money for even the most basic things," he told AFP...

...For someone who lives on a dollar a day, buying a hot dog at the regular price of 20 kronor (2.60 dollars, 2.10 euros) would be as impossible as asking your typical, well-to-do Swede to pay one thousand kronor for a "korv", he pointed out.

And, no, these pricey dogs will not be made of outlandishly expensive ingredients. This isn't simply a commercial PR stunt, like the $1000 dollar omelet. The spotlight here is the crisis and the cause - not the culinary.