Culling Pigs in Flu Fight, Egypt Angers Herders and Dismays U.N.
New york Times, CAIRO , May 1, 2009
Egypt has begun forcibly slaughtering the country’s pig herds as a precaution against swine flu, a move that the United Nations described as “a real mistake” and one that is prompting anger among the country’s pig farmers.
The decision, announced Wednesday, is already adding new strains to the tense relations between Egypt’s majority Muslims and its Coptic Christians. Most of Egypt’s pig farmers are Christians, and some accuse the government of using swine flu fears to punish them economically.
According to World Health Organization officials, the decision to kill pigs has no scientific basis. “We don’t see any evidence that anyone is getting infected from pigs,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization’s assistant director general. “This appears to be a virus which is moving from person to person.”
The outbreak has been dubbed swine flu — now officially called influenza A(H1N1) — because scientists believe it started in pigs, but they do not know if that was recently or years ago. The name change was designed to allay fears about pigs and eating pork.
Egypt has not reported any cases of the new virus that has hit 11 other nations, but the country has been hard hit by avian flu.
The great majority of Egyptians are Muslim and do not eat pork because of religious restrictions, but about 10 percent of the population is Coptic Christian. As a result, Egyptian pig farmers are overwhelmingly Christian. And although some of the country’s Christians are middle class or wealthy, the Christian farmers are generally poor.
On Thursday, several urban pig farmers in Cairo said they see the government’s decision as just another expression of Egyptian Muslims’ resentment against Christians. Last year, there were several violent incidents that some believed were aimed at Christians, including the kidnapping and beating of monks. The Egyptian government denied the incidents had sectarian overtones, saying they were each part of other disputes, including a fight over land.
Barsoum Girgis, a 26-year-old pig farmer, lives in a poor neighborhood, Manshiet Nasser, built along the Mukatam cliffs on the eastern end of the city where most of the ramshackle, red-brick buildings were built illegally.
Mr. Girgis makes his living through a combination of raising pigs and collecting garbage — two professions that are often tied together in a city where garbage collection can be an informal affair and where poor farmers rely on food scraps to feed their livestock.
He wakes up every morning around 4 a.m. to collect garbage around the city. When he gets back to Manshiet Nasser, at around 9 a.m., he sorts the trash, putting aside what can be sold at the city’s booming scrap markets and what he can use as pig feed.
“The government here is going after our livelihood,” he said, nervously playing with a wooden cross he wears around his neck. “These pigs are perfectly healthy. How am I going to feed my children and send them to school without my livestock?”
Mr. Girgis lives with his extended family, about 30 people, in the first two floors of a building that leans against a cliff. His 60 small pigs live on the ground floor. They have dark, furry skin, and their squeals can be heard a block away from Mr. Girgis’ home.
Many of Cairo’s pig farmers live in similar conditions, sharing their small spaces in the teeming city with their animals.
After international health officials criticized Egypt’s decision to kill about 300,000 pigs, the Agriculture Ministry’s head of infectious diseases, Saber Abdel Aziz Galal, explained that the cull was “a general health measure,” according to Agence France-Presse.
"It is good to restructure this kind of breeding in good farms, not on rubbish," the agency quoted him as saying.
“We will build new farms in special areas, like in Europe,” he said. “Within two years the pigs will return, but we need first to build new farms."
It remains unclear if the government will compensate the farmers for their losses. The Health Ministry originally said the farmers would be paid, but after many in Parliament disagreed, the ministry appeared to back down.
Some in Cairo, anxious over the reports of swine flu agree, with the government’s move. “Now we know there is a reason God bans pigs: they spread sickness” said Mohsen Hamady, a 50-year-old accountant who was sipping tea after work in a Cairo tea house.
But many pig farmers say they do a valuable service for the rest of Cairo that will be recognized only if they stop picking up the trash.
“If they take away our pigs, why would we go collect their garbage every morning?” said Marcos Shalab, a 40-year-old pig farmer in Manshiet Nasser.
Mr. Girgis echoed this feeling. “We are Christian, and we are the underclass, so it’s very easy to go after us. But this city relies on us to process its waste. It relies on the pigs.”
Egypt has begun forcibly slaughtering the country’s pig herds as a precaution against swine flu, a move that the United Nations described as “a real mistake” and one that is prompting anger among the country’s pig farmers.
The decision, announced Wednesday, is already adding new strains to the tense relations between Egypt’s majority Muslims and its Coptic Christians. Most of Egypt’s pig farmers are Christians, and some accuse the government of using swine flu fears to punish them economically.
According to World Health Organization officials, the decision to kill pigs has no scientific basis. “We don’t see any evidence that anyone is getting infected from pigs,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization’s assistant director general. “This appears to be a virus which is moving from person to person.”
The outbreak has been dubbed swine flu — now officially called influenza A(H1N1) — because scientists believe it started in pigs, but they do not know if that was recently or years ago. The name change was designed to allay fears about pigs and eating pork.
Egypt has not reported any cases of the new virus that has hit 11 other nations, but the country has been hard hit by avian flu.
The great majority of Egyptians are Muslim and do not eat pork because of religious restrictions, but about 10 percent of the population is Coptic Christian. As a result, Egyptian pig farmers are overwhelmingly Christian. And although some of the country’s Christians are middle class or wealthy, the Christian farmers are generally poor.
On Thursday, several urban pig farmers in Cairo said they see the government’s decision as just another expression of Egyptian Muslims’ resentment against Christians. Last year, there were several violent incidents that some believed were aimed at Christians, including the kidnapping and beating of monks. The Egyptian government denied the incidents had sectarian overtones, saying they were each part of other disputes, including a fight over land.
Barsoum Girgis, a 26-year-old pig farmer, lives in a poor neighborhood, Manshiet Nasser, built along the Mukatam cliffs on the eastern end of the city where most of the ramshackle, red-brick buildings were built illegally.
Mr. Girgis makes his living through a combination of raising pigs and collecting garbage — two professions that are often tied together in a city where garbage collection can be an informal affair and where poor farmers rely on food scraps to feed their livestock.
He wakes up every morning around 4 a.m. to collect garbage around the city. When he gets back to Manshiet Nasser, at around 9 a.m., he sorts the trash, putting aside what can be sold at the city’s booming scrap markets and what he can use as pig feed.
“The government here is going after our livelihood,” he said, nervously playing with a wooden cross he wears around his neck. “These pigs are perfectly healthy. How am I going to feed my children and send them to school without my livestock?”
Mr. Girgis lives with his extended family, about 30 people, in the first two floors of a building that leans against a cliff. His 60 small pigs live on the ground floor. They have dark, furry skin, and their squeals can be heard a block away from Mr. Girgis’ home.
Many of Cairo’s pig farmers live in similar conditions, sharing their small spaces in the teeming city with their animals.
After international health officials criticized Egypt’s decision to kill about 300,000 pigs, the Agriculture Ministry’s head of infectious diseases, Saber Abdel Aziz Galal, explained that the cull was “a general health measure,” according to Agence France-Presse.
"It is good to restructure this kind of breeding in good farms, not on rubbish," the agency quoted him as saying.
“We will build new farms in special areas, like in Europe,” he said. “Within two years the pigs will return, but we need first to build new farms."
It remains unclear if the government will compensate the farmers for their losses. The Health Ministry originally said the farmers would be paid, but after many in Parliament disagreed, the ministry appeared to back down.
Some in Cairo, anxious over the reports of swine flu agree, with the government’s move. “Now we know there is a reason God bans pigs: they spread sickness” said Mohsen Hamady, a 50-year-old accountant who was sipping tea after work in a Cairo tea house.
But many pig farmers say they do a valuable service for the rest of Cairo that will be recognized only if they stop picking up the trash.
“If they take away our pigs, why would we go collect their garbage every morning?” said Marcos Shalab, a 40-year-old pig farmer in Manshiet Nasser.
Mr. Girgis echoed this feeling. “We are Christian, and we are the underclass, so it’s very easy to go after us. But this city relies on us to process its waste. It relies on the pigs.”