Ciego de Ávila holds the Cuban record for cattle slaughtered and stolen

The province of Ciego de Ávila holds the Cuban record for theft and illegal slaughter of large livestock, with 17 in one day, reported the National Revolutionary Police (PNR).

The week of July 18 to 24, the rustlers committed ten crimes a day, with a peak of 17 cattle stolen and slaughtered, the PNR detailed in a meeting of the agricultural and livestock sector in the central Cuban province, which valued the losses at 728 thousand Cuban pesos (30,333 USD, at the official exchange rate).

“We cannot let our guard down for a moment with these events. It is necessary to check daily, to gain prevention so as not to find ourselves in the need to clarify any crime later,” said Liván Izquierdo Alonso, member of the Central Committee and first secretary of the communist party in the province, quoted by the newspaper.Invader.

In addition, the theft and slaughter of livestock, the people of Avila endure continued crimes against central pivot irrigation systems for the theft of their electrical cables and an increase in damage to state and private assets, which the authorities attribute to a decrease in surveillance. administrative and peasant.

Given the increase in the crime curve and the chronic shortage of food, Izquierdo Alonso ordered that the municipal commissions on crimes against livestock meet weekly, and not monthly, as was the case until the red week in Ciego de Ávila, where crime prevails. disorder.

But the partisan order does not seem to have convinced one of the readers of theInvader, who identifies himself as Luis and wrote in the comments at the bottom of the page: This cannot be resolved with more commissions or more weekly or daily meetings. This is resolved by assigning areas to the police with their means, even horses, and having them respond for crimes in their area. Let them activate all surveillance mechanisms, fine the owners who do not take care of their livestock, and let them tour the areas. There is no other way. ANAP and companies can also organize care patrols. Anything but more meetings to agree on the agreements for the next one.

The meeting that addressed the record of crimes against livestock also confirmed non-compliance in the birth of calves, 2,527 fewer than expected; The municipality of Baraguá is the only one that meets the goals for bovine births.

Sometimes, the calf is born, but is not registered in the Livestock Registry, warned the first secretary of the communist party in Ciego de Ávila; animals that, in the end, "escape" through routes other than the official ones, due to the lack of rigor.

The Agricultural Company "Ruta Invasora" accumulates a deficit of more than 100,000 liters of milk, over the planned production volume; while in the rest of the province, dairy production is gradually recovering.

Regarding the delivery of land to ranchers and producers, the communist conclave recalled that livestock owners in the municipalities of Majagua, Venezuela and Ciego de Ávila, lacking their own land, have until August 31 to request land; without clarifying whether they are sold, rented or transferred.

The province has 1,639 ranchers with ten or more cows, but without adjacent areas to expand their dairy farms, according to data from the delegate of the Ministry of Agriculture, Orlando Pérez Pedreira; that insisted on the delays in the planting plans in the three municipalities mentioned above; attributed to fuel shortages.

In 2021, Ciego de Ávila reported 1,689 heads of stolen cattle. The figure represents more than double the thefts in 2020, which amounted to 824 head of cattle.

Recently, the Cuban authorities announced some measures with which they intend to increase the recovery and control of the livestock mass on the island, which at the end of May counted 3,621,489 heads of cattle in the country.

These include an increase in the sowing plan for forage and protein plants, the creation of 175 heifer development centers to ensure an increase in productive indicators and mass growth, as well as the “selection of ten advanced producers in each municipality to develop and transmit management and exploitation technologies.”

In April of last year, the authorities gave the green light to the free marketing of meat from small and large livestock to agricultural producers, as well as fresh milk and its derivatives, in a package of 63 measures aimed at increasing food production and recovering the livestock.

However, at the end of 2021 the figures were discouraging, with the loss of a quarter of the cattle herd in the last four decades, and the reduction to 10.2% of the livestock mass between 2014 and 2021, which already showed a decrease. sustained for almost 30 years, according to data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI).