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The
"Rabbit Plan" is an effort by the government of President
Nicolas Maduro to boost food availability. Authorities have also
taught citizens to plant food on roofs and balconies of their
homes.
Maduro's adversaries dismiss such ideas as nonsensical,
insisting the real problem is a failed model of oil-financed
socialism that was unable to survive after crude markets
collapsed.
"There is a cultural problem because we have been taught that
rabbits are cute pets," Urban Agriculture Minister Freddy Bernal
said during a televised broadcast with Maduro this week. "A
rabbit is not a pet; it's two and a half kilos (5.5 pounds) of
meat that is high in protein, with no cholesterol."
Maduro's critics lampooned the idea.
"Are you serious?" asked Henrique Capriles, a state governor and
two-time opposition presidential candidate in a video to
response to Bernal. " ... You want people to start raising
rabbits to solve the problem of hunger in our country?"
Rabbit consumption is common in Europe and to lesser extent in
the United States. The animals are more efficient than pigs and
cattle in converting protein into edible meat, according to the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
But raising rabbits in significant quantities in contemporary
Venezuela would be difficult.
The country's constant shortages, resulting from stringent price
and currency controls, would probably leave the would-be rabbit
industry struggling to find materials ranging from feed to metal
and wire for breeding cages.
Maduro says the country is a victim of an "economic war" led by
adversaries and fueled by recent sanctions imposed by the
administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.
(Reporting by Corina Pons; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
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