title: Socialist Utopia of Venezuela Tells People to Eat Their Pets
text:  GENERALLY, VENEZUELANS DO NOT EAT RABBITS AND SEE THEM AS PETS The Venezuelan government just urged its citizens to eat their pet rabbits so they won t starve to death. A severe food crisis is part of the socialist utopia that just keeps going downhill. What s next? Cannibalism?President Nicolas Maduro unveiled a government program called  Plan Rabbit  at a meeting with his agriculture minister, Freddy Bernal, that was broadcast on Periscope, CNN Money reported. It s a plan to distribute rabbits to communities across Venezuela to breed and eat. Maduro noted that rabbits breed quickly and are a good source of protein, but not cholesterol.GOVERNMENT PUSHES A  CHANGE IN CONSUMPTION PATTERNS The rabbit isn t a pet, it s only two and a half kilos of meat,  Bernal stressed in the streamed announcement. He then invoked President Donald Trump to push the program. Trump s attack against the Venezuelan people is an opportunity to revise and change cultural consumption patterns,  he said.Venezuelan opposition leaders immediately slammed the move. Are you serious?  asked former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles in a video response.  You want people to start raising rabbits to solve the problem of hunger in our country? A 2016 study found that three-fourths of Venezuelans had lost almost twenty pounds on average over the course of the year. Meat is particularly scarce in the South American nation, with citizens even resorting to butchering zoo animals, according to police.Most economists agree the mass hunger is the result of socialist government policies spearheaded by former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and Maduro, his successor. Chavez instituted price controls on many food items, which helped lead to shortages and massive inflation.We ve previously reported on shortages of food and even toilet paper in Venezuela.BYOTP! NO TOILET PAPER AND NO FOODSocialism doesn t work but I guess Venezuela didn t get the memo. No toilet paper? No food? Yes, it s come to that in this socialist hellhole Venezuela s product shortages have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap, a local tourism industry spokesman said on Wednesday .  It s an extreme situation,  says Xinia Camacho, owner of a 20-room boutique hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada national park.  For over a year we haven t had toilet paper, soap, any kind of milk, coffee or sugar. So we have to tell our guests to come prepared.  Montilla says bigger hotels can circumvent product shortages by buying toilet paper and other basic supplies from black market smugglers who charge up to 6-times the regular price. But smaller, family-run hotels can t always afford to pay such steep prices, which means that sometimes they have to make do without.READ MORE: WFB 