It is breakfast time at the Novo-Petrovsky chicken farm. Clucking and squawking, 500,000 birds burst into action.

Farm administrator Anna Turkina is my guide. She assures me that the idea of making caviar from chicken eggs is not as far fetched as it sounds.

"We make this caviar from chicken eggs - and it is very tasty! Chemical content of eggs from fish and eggs from chicken - not so different."

To see the process in action, I am ushered into a small room next to the chicken house. A woman called Masha, doctor-like in her white coat and headscarf, is busy mixing eggs with sunflower oil, salt and fish essence.

A dash of tea

The mixture is then poured into a special machine which creates tiny droplets of "caviar" and fries them in boiling oil.

The result - thousands upon thousands of shiny black pearls. It is pure magic.

The chicken egg caviar is scraped into little jars - over 400 are produced here every day. It looks just like the real thing, and tastes remarkably similar.

But at only 80 cents a pot, it is 15 times cheaper than caviar from sturgeon. And that is not the only advantage.

Iodine: Secret ingredient

This caviar has one other special ingredient which could improve the health of the entire Russian nation.

Most Russians do not get enough iodine in their daily diet and that, according to scientists, could lead to disaster.

Grigory Gerasimov, a researcher at Moscow's Endocrinology Centre, believes that caviar from iodised chicken eggs could be a cheap and effective way of helping to protect the population.

"The proper iodine supply means normal mental, physical, emotional growth and all development - and without it it means low intellectual level. It means that the people have no good future. "