Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Point Fortin Paula Gopee-Scoon has ex­press­ing out­rage over the de­ci­sion by the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry to cap­ture and dis­pose cat­tle in the Cer­dos/Ica­cos ar­eas. Gopee-Scoon said while she agreed that the an­i­mals which some­times strayed and threat­ened the lives of cit­i­zens, the Gov­ern­ment should have ex­plored oth­er al­ter­na­tives in the in­ter­est of the own­ers. The min­istry is­sued no­tices last Sun­day ad­vis­ing the cat­tle own­ers to se­cure their an­i­mals, fail­ing which they would be cap­tured, slaugh­tered and dis­posed of.

The an­i­mals were re­port­ed­ly dam­ag­ing agri­cul­ture, prop­er­ty and posed a health threat in the area. Sol­diers were au­tho­rised to kill the an­i­mals be­cause of the threat they posed to cit­i­zens. But Gopee-Scoon said rear­ing of the an­i­mals was the on­ly means of em­ploy­ment for the peo­ple of those com­mu­ni­ties and the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion should have ex­plored oth­er av­enues to en­sure the own­ers could con­tin­ue to make a liv­ing. She said some fenced area could have been iden­ti­fied and made avail­able to the farm­ers for the an­i­mals to feed with­out en­dan­ger­ing life or limb.

She added that the lev­el of un­em­ploy­ment in the area was very high and the own­ers should be al­lowed to ply their trade.

The cat­tle own­ers say the Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing away their liveli­hood. Mean­while, a re­lease is­sued by the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry yes­ter­day said of­fi­cials have pledged to as­sist the own­ers who re­quest­ed as­sis­tance to cor­ral their stray cat­tle. "We wish to re­it­er­ate the po­si­tion that our first point of ac­tion is to tran­qualise these an­i­mals with the as­sis­tance of the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go," the re­lease said. "The felling of any an­i­mal is a last re­sort."