Cuban meat production hit by U.S. blockade

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba, October 21 (ACN) Officials from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs and workers from the meat industry in this city discussed the real impact of the 60-plus year-old U.S. blockade on their work, marked by limitations to get raw materials, technologies, and financing to the detriment of production capacity and supply levels.

Orlando Quevedo Torres, director of the local meat enterprise, remarked that the said U.S. Cuba policy has clearly negative effects on the entity and its ability, especially in recent years, to import essential consumables for meat production, a reality they have tried to mitigate using raw materials from agriculture and livestock, including pork, sheep and chicken.

Alejandro Betancourt Peña, an official with the Canada-Europe Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stressed that the meeting was also intended to take note of the concerns expressed by the workers and to review the historical causes of the current economic situation.

“It is up to all of us—young people, managers, institutions—to come up with solutions to transform today’s reality; only by gaining culture, reading our history, and acting accordingly will we be able to understand the reasons that we are living through this situation today and how to deal with it”, he pointed out.