14ymedio, Havana, 29 January 2024 — For months, the dairy industry of Sancti Spíritus has not been able to cover the more than 5,280 gallons per day needed by those who require a special diet. This, added to the deficit of 2,900 million gallons with which they closed 2023, affects thousands of patients, pregnant women and parents who get the product from the bodegas (ration stores). This Monday, the official press delivers the culprit on a platter: “the managers of the dairy and commercial companies is where the greatest lack of control is usually manifested.”
According to Escambray, “the debts with deliveries to the State by Agriculture,” the “failures with the distribution of the family basket,” the “distributions at the wrong time and the consequent effects on consumers” are just the tip of the iceberg of the dairy industry in the province, whose authorities fail to “control” the producers. The “effects” already reach more than 70,000 patients, pregnant women and children from six months to seven years old in Trinidad and the provincial capital alone.
Marina, a 61-year-old woman from Sanct Spíritus, who receives milk on a medical diet, tells 14ymedio that the situation is even more serious than the authorities reveal. “I should get milk 10 days a month, but so far in January I have only received it twice. I don’t know what the leaders want me to do with so little,” she says.
“On top of that, the milk is getting more and more watered down. You put it on the stove and it doesn’t boil. It keeps evaporating as if it were water”
“The distributions in the bodega are divided according to the groups of children, the pregnant and the sick – A, B and C – and I belong to C. If the milk arrives only for the A, that means that I don’t get it that day. They also sometimes deliver, for example, only half a gallon instead of a whole gallon. This is how they create the illusion that they are handing out milk when in reality they aren’t. On top of that, the milk is getting more and more watered down. You put it on the stove and it doesn’t boil. It keeps evaporating as if it were water,” says the woman.
“It’s true, as they say, that other provinces have not even had medical diets for a long time and that some distribute half a gallon to children instead of the whole gallon they should get. This happens in a province that, by the figures, is the second highest milk producer in Cuba,” which also exports to three other provinces, repo