MADRID, Spain.- After months of complaints from producers about cattle theft, the Ministry of Agriculture acknowledged that cattle theft in Cuba shot up 145% in 2022 compared to 2021.
According to information from Adrián Gutiérrez Velázquez, director of livestock of the Ministry of Agriculture, 2022 closed with more than 82,000 heads lost due to theft and slaughter, while in 2021 the figure was 33,000, so the growth it is about 48 thousand head of cattle more than the previous year.
Quoted by cubadebate, Gutiérrez Velázquez specified that this figure represents 16,000 tons of meat, which is, in turn, 5,000 tons of boneless meat; “which is equivalent to two pounds of meat per person lost to theft and slaughter alone.”
The rampant increase in theft began in June 2022, reaching peaks of up to 10,000 heads per month, he added.
The province where the most cattle thefts were registered in 2022 was Villa Clara, with 12,243 cases compared to 4,079 the previous year. Holguín followed, with the theft of 9,825 heads, almost double that of 2021. While in Matanzas, the third province with the highest number of robberies, it went from 2,926 losses in 2021 to 8,159 in 2022.
Regarding this situation, Denis Sixto Rodríguez, director of the state-owned Finca Corralito, of the Camilo Cienfuegos Genetic Livestock Company, from Pinar del Río, spoke in an interview with cubadebate to impunity for those who steal.
According to the aforementioned media, the police cannot cope with the high number of robberies, and they do not have the necessary resources for the investigation.
As for the consequences of these events, the director of livestock of the Ministry of Agriculture pointed out: “Although we see it as something current, the real problem is the impact that it will have on livestock in the future. Having to protect animals from theft, we are forced to lock them. It is important that the cattle are loose at night to eat. As they are, it seems that we have them in a concentration camp.
On this he explained: “Animals locked from three or four in the afternoon until the next day deteriorate. Some 50,000 of the three million livestock mass kill us, but the great concern is the issue of confinement”.
