Senator slams Govt for dumping pig rearing tissue

An independent senator has accused agriculture officials of destroying 100 years of pig genetic tissue that will take another four to five decades to rebuild because of decisions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic without consultation.

Senator Christopher Maynard also charged that the influx of pork carcasses during the height of the pandemic harmed the domestic pork industry and there seems to be no one to answer for it.

Speaking in the Senate on Wednesday during debate on the Appropriation Bill, the noted doctor said the island’s pig farmers seem to have been forgotten and a once widespread industry is now dying.

His comments came against the background of the recent disclosure in the House of Assembly of a proposed gilt programme which involves rearing pigs for breeding. A gilt is a female pig that has not yet produced a litter of piglets or is being reared to grow to butcher.

“During the lockdown and all the consequences of it, there was a large influx of pork carcasses legally brought into the country. Licences were issued; it was a legal purchase and importation but without thought. There was no consideration given as to what it would do in the long term. Portions of the carcasses were used for manufacturing, but the remainder were sold on the local market at prices way below the normal price of pork and it had the impact of stifling the sale of pork,” Maynard told fellow senators.

He said that because of that situation, pigs that had been ready for market had to be disposed of.

“Somebody has to be responsible but nobody wants to talk about it, but we want to restart a gilt programme for breeding pigs when we have eaten the very pigs that we want to breed. We have destroyed 100 years of genetics by signing a paper. A Bajan pig is not an American pig nor is it an English pig. It is a hybrid. It is heat resistant and all the other attributes that you want. By making a decision without consideration and consultation, we have destroyed something that we have to take 40, 50 years to rebuild,” Maynard lamented.

According to him, the problem has persisted today, because pork is still being imported and sold in the marketplace.

“We cannot speak about agriculture and about providing loans in agriculture and do not support the pig industry,” Senator Maynard said, noting that a pig farmer could be someone with five pigs and those pigs would support a family. “I am not suggesting we should have pigs everywhere, but we shouldn’t do things that destroy agriculture, especially if you are responsible for it. You have to fix it.”

The independent senator also spoke of the problems of accessing water in the farming industry, suggesting that not enough has been done to educate Barbadians about the situation.

No Government so far has educated the public on the use of water in storage tanks which will breed mosquitoes and cause dengue, he declared.

Senator Maynard suggested that offering incentives like access to duty-free solar water pumps and encouraging the planting of kitchen gardens could start to address some of the problems now being experienced, including chronic lifestyle diseases.

(SP)