Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has invented a 'rabbit plan' where he is encouraging residents to start viewing rabbits as protein instead of pets in order to tackle the country's food shortage.

Venezuela's crippling economic crisis means that eating meat is a luxury for many.

'For animal protein, which is such an important issue, a 'rabbit plan' has been approved because rabbits also breed like rabbits,' President Nicolas Maduro joked on state television, introducing the idea as a cheaper alternative to other sources of meat.

'Rabbit plan': Rabbits innocently eating cabbage, unaware of the plan President Maduro has made

The president said the plan was part of his government's offensive in the 'economic war,' his term for Venezuela's worsening crisis, amid shortages of food and medicine.

A survey published earlier this year showed nearly 75 percent of the population lost an average of 8.7 kilos (19 pounds) in weight due to lack of proper nutrition because of the crisis.

Maduro said he had entrusted the project to the head of a government food program, Freddy Bernal.

Bernal said Venezuelans would have to get over their love of rabbits for the plan to work.

He said people needed to understand 'that the rabbit is not a pet, but two and a half kilos of meat with high protein and no cholesterol put on the table of Venezuelans.'

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro who has devised the 'rabbit plan' as a form of protein for his people

Violent protests over Maduro's government have plagued Venezuela over the past months. Pictured: A member of the national guard fires his shotgun during clashes in Caracas in July

An anti-government activist fires a improvised weapon during clashes with riot police in a protest in Caracas in July

A couple walking by a graffiti reading 'We Are Hungry' and 'Maduro Dictator'

Bernal told the same TV programme he recently delivered the first batches of rabbit pups to poor neighborhoods but he says people simply became fond of the animals and 'grabbed them as pets.'

'There is a cultural problem, because we have been taught that the rabbit is very nice, but seeing it from the point of view of the (economic) war, one rabbit arrives and in two months we have a rabbit of two and a half kilos (five pounds),' he said.

'A lot of people gave names to rabbits, they took them to bed,' so reversing the pattern 'is part of the battle to win the economic war.'

The socialist government has also considered goat breeding as a way to replace beef, given the higher costs of production.

The 'rabbit plan' sparked an angry response from opposition leader Henrique Capriles who dismissed it as a 'bad joke' and accused Maduro of believing the Venezuelan people are 'stupid.'

Voracious inflation - which the IMF said will climb to 720 percent this year - means Venezuelans earning the minimum wage have to spend 10 percent of their income to buy a kilo of meat.

UN urging temporary protection in Latin America for fleeing Venezuelans The UN migration agency is urging Latin American countries hosting growing numbers of Venezuelans fleeing economic crisis to give them temporary rights to stay, its deputy chief told AFP on Wednesday. 'There is indeed a spike in arrivals' in several countries in the region, Laura Thompson of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said after a two-day migration conference in Costa Rica that discussed the accelerating outflow of Venezuelans. 'Not everybody is asking for asylum. There are a lot of Venezuelans that are moving out of the country without specifically asking for asylum,' she said. 'What we have advised is for countries to take temporary protection measures, even for those that are not asking for asylum.' Certain countries, such as Colombia and Peru, have already extended measures to allow Venezuelans to stay for a time, she said. Others, such as Chile, were considering following suit. Yet others, however, lacked laws permitting a temporary protection status, Thompson said. 'Every single country is trying to take measures depending on the size of the influx and then needs,' she said. Venezuela's economic slide tipped into crisis when oil prices collapsed. Food and medicine shortages are now common, and it has the world's highest inflation rate. As a result, droves of Venezuelans have emigrated. According to a report by the IOM and the Organization for American States presented at the conference on Tuesday, asylum claims from Venezuelans have soared this year in Panama, Costa Rica and Mexico. In Panama, for instance, there were 12,756 applications for refugee status from Venezuelans in the first half of this year - nearly three times the number received for all of 2016. Advertisement



