Mortality has increased visibly, with 2.3% more than in 2023 and a rate of 7.5%, almost double the “permissible”
14ymedio, Madrid, March 10, 2025 — Veterinarians are on the pillory after the authorities publicly identified them as cooperating with ranchers in order to issue false death certificates. In fact, there are now several being prosecuted or in prison for this. Along with ranchers, for not declaring births or letting animals die, they are found guilty in a report published this Monday by Escambray, the official newspaper of Sancti Spíritus, which reports the losses in one year at 16,645 animals. Although the total amount is not given, the last provincial yearbook indicates that in 2022 there were 401,162 cattle.
Escambray expresses its indignation over the data uncovered by the “national exercise of control over the possession, use and legality of land and livestock,” which began a year ago and recently ended. There were 11,000 constructive or registration “illegalities,” which is not something minor, says the article, although it does downplay the situation by saying it can be solved with appropriate registration and permits.
The case with cattle is much worse, because it has an impact on the milk thar children and the elderly can drink, and the meat that the population can obtain. According to the report, 10,000 illegalities were committed in this area, of which 72% correspond to “undeclared births and missing cattle.”
“It cannot be possible that the number of births that were declared, 5,549 exactly, have been concentrated in the term of one month”
Norge Yero, deputy delegate of Agriculture in Sancti Spíritus, warns that the absences are directly proportional to the lack of attention by ranchers to livestock registration. “It cannot be possible that the number of births that were declared, 5,549 exactly, have been concentrated in the space of a month, when the adjustments began to be made and appeared in that period,” he reproaches.
In addition, the mortality increased visibly, with 2.3% more than in 2023 and an index of 7.5%, almost double what is “permissible.” Trinidad, with more than 4,000 deaths, and Sancti Spíritus, with 3,439, are in the lead. The Government has admitted the difficulties in importing fodder, preparations and all kinds of supplements for livestock feed, not to mention what it has had to manufacture. The official press does not hesitate to accuse the ranchers of “abandonment,” as they are also responsible for hunger and management problems that end up causing deaths from “malnutrition.”
“Mortality skyrocketed because of the adjustments that people made to the old figures. There is disorder in the categories of cattle deaths that show the general disorder. We have to put order in them once and for all,” says Juan José Nazco González, delegate of Agriculture, talking about the other deaths that occur due to accidents, real or not.
The managers, Escambray insists, affirm that the data “reveal indiscipline, disorder, crime and lack of control. One of them is the issuance of death certificates of dubious cause or false ones in which veterinary personnel, ranchers, butchers and others are involved.”
The media also points to local authorities and officials for not being more aware of these and other criminal acts that affect the Island’s food crisis. And although Nazco González alleges that measures have been taken, he also adds that “actions remain to be done, and more order, level of demand and discipline are needed,” a discourse that is perpetuated in an apparent assumption of responsibilities and commitments to improve that do not materialize at all.
“We are not tolerating indisciplines and crimes with the death certificates. What we have said on several occasions is demonstrated in one municipality. The death certificates mask illegal butchering, theft and other things,” admits a voice not identified in the media. Escambray reports that there is one veterinarian prosecuted for fraud and several imprisoned for stealing and/or eating animals that were declared dead by other causes. In addition, the case of a professional who certified three deaths on the same date and time in three different places is identified.
The fines, the text states, are “laughable” and are paid with the money obtained from the sale of meat in the informal market, “fueled by the historic lack of this protein in the official market.” So is the usefulness of the “control exercise,” since if systematic surveillance is not followed, “in six months it will be the same as before we started,” says a rancher. The article ends by adding, “We will be worse.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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