JAPANESE FARMERS LOSE AS CALVES, PIGLETS ARE STOLEN

Thefts of calves and piglets have been taking place one after another in the north Kanto region of eastern Japan, with eight cows and 670 piglets stolen along with other farming produce, police say, Kanako Watanabe, Kodai Tamai and Hinako Kikuchi reported for Mainichi Shimbun late on August 29, 2020. 

According to both the Tochigi and Gunma prefectural police, the losses incurred by the thefts have topped 26 million yen (about $246,785). It's thought that reselling the calves or piglets would be difficult for the perpetrators, and the motive for the thefts is not yet understood. But reselling the cows would be difficult, and there are still a number of unresolved mysteries around the thefts. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, calves are tagged with an individual 10-digit tracing number shortly after birth as part of a ministry system to track cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Any cow without an identifying ear tag cannot go to market. 

Elsewhere, in Gunma Prefecture, a total of 670 pigs were stolen between early July and the middle of August. This is said to have cost farmers in the four Gunma prefectural cities of Maebashi, Isezaki, Ota and Tatebayashi upwards of 24 million yen. The Gunma livestock farming association reported that many of the stolen pigs were piglets between 1 1/2 and 2 months old, weighing around 52 kilograms each. A person in charge at the association expressed their confusion, saying, "Piglets have a low economic value when it comes to selling them for meat, so there's fundamentally no market for them."

Apart from the pigs, 28 chickens have been stolen in Isezaki, and in Tatebayashi and the prefecture's Ora district, two cows have also been taken.