YESTERDAY’S MIDWEEK NATION REPORT of the savage and illegal Christmas Eve butchering of one of Nigel Daniel’s prize bulls is not only shocking. It arouses revulsion and deep indignation in all law-abiding and peacekeeping citizens.
And we cannot help but feel a great deal of empathy with St John farmer Daniel’s declared distress. It is enough to make one give up. It is not the first time a Barbadian farmer has found his animals slaughtered.
The story Mr Daniel has given us is nauseating, to say the least, and we can’t help but commend him for indicating he will stay in the livestock business despite the criminal act perpetrated against the $4 000 bull he was preparing for exhibition at Agrofest in February – particularly when we consider the severe economic strain we all have been experiencing.
These heartless, selfish, ruthless thieves took it upon themselves to wait until the bull’s owner was at a midnight Christmas service to fell the 1 700-pound animal and rip its meat from under its skin – naturally for a hefty profit, as they suffered neither the expense nor burden of rearing it for the two years of its life.
In a most cynical turn of events, Mr Daniel had fattened the bull for someone else’s kill.
And now the Bath Land farmer is so frustrated that he “cannot bear to look and see other animals. I don’t know if I can enter any of them [in Agrofest]”. When he is again fully composed he will have to start all over, the Christmas slaughter of his male cow ever etched in his memory.
Mr Daniel’s painful and expensive process of restocking in another two years surely needs more than our sympathy; it demands justice. In the meantime, Mr Daniel will have to resort to some kind of security measure. Who will come to his aid, and to that of the other victims before him?
To date we have no national estimated loss to predial larceny. But the big open secret is that the theft and sale of agricultural produce is big business. As such, we insist that there must yet be another review of the penalties for people found guilty of this crime. We have no illusion that it will always be easy to catch the crop and livestock thieves, but imprisonment of these offenders or confiscation of proceeds from their plundering must be swift and exacting.
Certainly, as precautionary measures, we must have in place systems of prevention via security, which will be challenging, and traceability in which every sale to food distributors and retailers is accounted for and above board.
Only licensed butchers ought to be allowed to operate, and all farmers and their produce properly registered.
And all this must not only have life in long talk; any worthwhile system agreed upon must be carefully monitored and rigorously enforced.
Someone somewhere might suggest a commissioned exhaustive study.
The reports of such have not been unknown to be parked on shelves in some Government office. We hope nothing comes of such insipidness. Enough of the bull!
