Venezuela should breed pigeons and leave rabbits alone
Crisis in Venezuela. A Mis-managed economy has created poverty from riches.
Venezuela’s government has urged citizens to see rabbits as more than “cute pets” as it defended a plan to breed and eat them – even as the opposition says this would do nothing to end chronic food shortages.
The questions must be: what do you feed the rabbits; and how do you cook them?
President Nicolás Maduro went on telly to tell the people that “for animal protein, which is such an important issue, a ‘rabbit plan’ has been approved because rabbits also breed like rabbits”.
As we’ve noted, its not rabbits you need, it’s pigeons, feral ones. In Exeter, England, vagrants are catching the vermin for food. It turn out that when you kill a feral pigeon, more replace it. As Trafford Council notes:
…for most pigeon problems, lethal methods are totally ineffective. They simply reduce competition for food and shelter, and the remaining birds increase their breeding rates to compensate. Although there is an immediate decrease, numbers soon recover, resulting in an endless cycle of killing and re-population.
And eating, too.
And there’s another problem with rabbits: they are adorable. Mr Freddy Bernal, the country’s minister of urban agriculture, says that lots of rabbits were given to communities to breed for food. “A lot of people gave names to the rabbits, they took them to bed,” says Mr Bernal.
And lots more can go wrong when you rear rabbit. “Rabbits were introduced to Australia as part of a broad attempt by early colonists to make Australia as much like Europe as they possibly could,” says Greg Mutze, research officer at the Department of Water, Land and Biodiversity Conservation in South Australia. “It was hoped that they would flourish so that the owners could hunt them.” By the 1920s, Australia’s rabbit population had reached to 10 billion.
And, boy, do they eat a lot.
Forget rabbits. Go for pigeons.
Posted: 15th, September 2017 | In: News, Politicians, Strange But True, The Consumer Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
