Bad weekend to talk about food sovereignty. The people of Matanzas have been the first to go up to the authorities, immersed in the future law that aims to protect the right to food, after several days of new troubles in that field.
The neighbors went to bed this Sunday with the news that the milk from three areas of the provincial capital, Naranjal, Matanzas Este and Peñas Altas, has been spoiled by a massive decomposition whose causes are still unknown. According to ad the Dairy Products Company of Matanzas, the facts are being investigated, since the milk arrived on Sunday afternoon and had been pasteurized.
According to the official explanation, the milk would begin to be replenished at 6 pm that same day, when it would also arrive to be pasteurized. But there is no powdered milk that can replace the lack caused by losses, which “makes it impossible for this response to be in the shortest possible time.”
“The truth is that only mothers know what we are going through with this issue. The same thing happens at 10 at night, when the children fell asleep exhausted from crying because they did not have anything to drink before bed”
“The truth is that only mothers know what we are going through with this issue. The same thing happens at 10 at night, when the children fell asleep exhausted from crying for not having what to drink before bed, which is cut off with tremendous ease. and they tell you that tomorrow they will replace it,” lamented a user on Facebook. She was not the only one complaining about the lack of punctuality.
“Here what is broken is the schedule, that the same thing comes at 12 at night as at 6 in the afternoon. In short, playing with something so delicate for a child,” exposes another.
“And the diet of the sick, especially people on a special diet, or bedridden? Here, in Matanzas, the provincial capital, it was withdrawn a year ago and they never gave more information. Now in the towns of the interior. Where is that sovereignty food that even a TV spot has? In short, another crude and poorly told mockery”, reproaches a mother. “In the same way, and with a little style name: food sovereignty, culture of resistance… it’s the latest trend to adorn the same shit or worse,” she answers another, annoyed.
For decades, Cuban leaders installed in the population the idea that milk was an essential food that should be consumed daily by children and adults. Known was the obsession of Fidel Castro himself for the product, whose cult peaked with Ubre Blanca, the cow that entered Guinness by giving more than 100 liters of milk in three milkings in 1982.
His successor, General Raúl Castro, promised in 2007 that it was necessary to “produce milk so that anyone who wants it can drink it”, when already in that year it was known that calcium (the element that makes dairy) is found in many other foods, including all dark leafy vegetables except spinach). However, politics has led generations of Cubans to experience the loss of each drop of milk as a greater tragedy than that of cabbage, which contains the same nutrient.
The disgust has been added to that already dragged by the people of Matanzas due to the “fragments of non-soluble foreign matter” found in the sugar in this month’s basket. State television confirmed that the images broadcast by users on social networks of the product mixed with blackish particles were real. After taking a sample to the laboratory of the Municipal Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology of Cárdenas for analysis, “the presence of objectionable particles (pieces of materials that vary in size and quantity)” was confirmed.
Dr. Bella Canosa Besú, director of the laboratory, said that the product will be certified throughout the province and its sale will be gradually restored depending on the results of the analysis.
Dr. Bella Canosa Besú, director of the laboratory, said that the product will be certified throughout the province and its sale will be gradually restored depending on the results of the analysis.
A note published in Telebandera made it clear that “according to specialized standards, given the current conditions, this food product is not suitable for human consumption” and asks consumers who have this type of sugar to return the product in poor condition, as explained Heykel Vázquez Moreno, deputy director of the Municipal Company of Commerce and Gastronomy.
The entity has been forced to stop the sale and carry out a sampling investigation of each warehouse to determine where it can be sold again.
“All the raw sugar that has been sold for months in various warehouses in the city of Matanzas is simply not suitable for consumption. A large number of foreign particles, some of them metallic and others whose composition we do not know, and so we consume it, without knowing the effect on our health and that of our children. Now, due to a complaint, the sale was paralyzed and if it is not reported, it is not detected, because there is no effective system to control the production and sale of food, neither to the private nor to the state sector Hopefully the matter will be reviewed and the quality of the sugar that is marketed to the population improves. The only one we can consume because there is no other market where we can buy it,” summarized one of the many comments from outraged Matanzas.
Although a similar event has not yet transpired in other provinces, another user assures that in Villa Clara the situation is not far from that of Matanzas. “Sugar here, in Villa Clara, the bean seeds sold… seem like horror stories. Now who is responsible for the sugar reaching the warehouse? And what will happen if there are people who have consumed it?” , among them children? We are living horrible times, Cubans against Cubans, envy, products in poor condition, high prices and persecuted and yet the prices of the stores in MLC continue to rise and so far no one responds, in conclusion, I do not know how far more can be reached in Cuba,” he predicts.
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