STEWART CASTLE, Trelawny — FARMERS from this rural community are calling for the speedy implementation of the proposed National Animal Identification and Traceability System (NAITS).

Former Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, the late Roger Clarke, announced plans for a new programme to tag animals and issue them passports, backed up by police prevention support, as the latest effort to break the back of praedial larceny.

“We need the Government to implement the traceability system. We need it,” prominent Trelawny farmer Herbert ‘Mass B’ Bell, told the Jamaica Observer West.

The call follows the theft of four animals — three cows in an advanced state of pregnancy and a bull — from a pasture in the Stewart Castle area of Trelawny last week.

One of the owners of the stolen animals, Morris Knowles, lamented his loss.

“I came to move my cow them this [Friday] morning and see four of them dead. Them just empty out them belly and gone with them body,” bemoaned the distressed farmer.

Meanwhile, Teddy Smith, another farmer whose animal was among the four stolen, said that over the past five years, livestock farmers have been dogged by praedial larceny in the community.

“We are losing cows for over five years now. Each time four, five even six at times. Sometimes they kill them and sometimes they don’t,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, “Mass B” said Government needs to take more radical actions against the praedial thieves.

“The Government need to make a drastic move on thieves. Mi don’t know what dem [Government] ah wait pon; fi dem thief and then dem ketch dem and give dem 50 years [imprisonment]?” a disgruntled Bell asked.

— Horace Hines