Venezuelan people are in quite a fix as the country is in lockdown and people are struggling to make ends meet. For people who cannot get their hands on basic resources right now, cattle blood has become their source of protein since they can find it for free.
In the western town of San Cristobal, people are lining up to get cow's blood since they claim that subsidized food from the government is arriving too slowly, as mentioned in a Reuters report.
Apparently, cow's blood is a traditional ingredient for 'pichon' soup in the Venezuelan Andes and Colombia. People have been trying to collect it ever since the COVID-19 outbreak. Venezuela is known for its carnivorous diet and people are not happy about consuming blood instead of meat. The cost of meat is almost two times the minimum monthly wage.
The country was already suffering six years of hyper-inflationary?implosion and this pandemic has pushed Venezuela to the edge. The increase in the consumption of cattle blood is a clear symbol of hunger that persists as an urgent issue in the country.
Even though the country isn't as badly hit with the virus as a few others, the economic slowdown has delayed the food distribution program known as CLAP, which has been the main source of food for many in the country.
The country is facing a serious hunger issue and even before the pandemic hit, the UN called Venezuela one of the world's 10 worst humanitarian crises in 2019, saying that 9.3 million of its 30 million population receive inadequate quantities of food. It also added that as a result of this, 5 million people have migrated.
Venezuela has had 440 coronavirus cases and 10 deaths. People believe that it's not the virus that will kill them but the hunger.?