Venezuela-What's For Dinner?

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Good Morning, today is September 01, 2017.

NEED TO KNOW What’s for Dinner? Though Venezuela boasts the largest oil reserves in the world, the collapse of its socialist economic model has led to chronic food shortages, malnutrition and civil unrest. As a result, destitute Venezuelan’s are left to scrounge for food wherever they can find it – even in their local zoo, Reuters reports. Venezuelan police are currently investigating a string of thefts from a zoo in the western state of Zulia. The missing beasts include two collared peccaries, an animal similar to a boar, and two tapirs, a pig-like jungle animal that’s on the brink of extinction. Police are working under the assumption that the animals were taken “with the intention of eating them,” Luis Morales, an official for the Zulia division of Venezuela’s National Police, recently told reporters. Zoo officials dispute that conclusion, however, claiming that the animals were likely lifted by drug dealers hoping to sell the animals for a profit. While the international community claims Venezuela’s woes are a direct result of the government’s economic gaffes, President Nicolas Maduro contends that food shortages are due to opposition protests that have clogged trade routes.