Egypt Orders Slaughter Of All Pigs - UPDATES

[Bianca]

                                      Egypt orders slaughter of all pigs over swine flu 
 





Apr 29, 2009
By MAAMOUN YOUSSEF
Associated Press Writer 
 CAIRO
(AP)

- Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country Wednesday as a precautionary measure against the spread of swine flu even though no cases have been reported here yet, the Health Ministry said.
The move immediately provoked resistance from pig farmers. At one large pig farming center just north of Cairo, farmers refused to cooperate with Health Ministry workers who came to slaughter the animals and the workers left without carrying out the government order.


"It has been decided to immediately start slaughtering all the pigs in Egypt using the full capacity of the country's slaughterhouses," Health Minister Hatem el-Gabaly told reporters after a Cabinet meeting with President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt's overwhelmingly Muslim population does not eat pork due to religious restrictions. But the animals are raised and consumed by the Christian minority, which some estimates put at 10 percent of the population.

Health Ministry spokesman Abdel Rahman estimated there were between 300,000-350,000 pigs in Egypt.

Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza told reporters that farmers would be allowed to sell the pork meat so there would be no need for compensation.

In 2008, following fears over diseases spread by animals, Mubarak ordered all pig and chicken farms moved out of population areas. But the order was never implemented.

Pigs can be found in many places around Muslim world, often raised by religious minorities who can eat pork. But they are banned entirely in some Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Libya.

In Jordan, the government decided Wednesday to shut down the country's five pig farms, involving 800 animals, for violating public health safety regulations.



Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

[Holy War]

Some very misguided and stupid people.

[Bianca]

No surprise, Holy War.

Egypt is primarily an Islamic country.....

[Bianca]

                                              Clashes erupt over Egypt pig cull 
 




BBC NEWS
May 3, 2009

Clashes began outside Cairo on Saturday.

Pig farmers have clashed with police in Cairo as they try to stop their animals being taken for slaughter, reports say.

Hundreds of people threw stones and bottles at police, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.

The authorities are carrying out a mass pig cull in what they at first said was a precaution against swine flu but now describe as a general health measure.

UN experts have criticised the move as unnecessary and a mistake, as Mexico said the outbreak could be stabilising.



Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said the country was seeing fewer cases every day.

Globally more than 700 people are known to be infected.

Person-to-person transmission has been confirmed in six countries.

But in cases outside Mexico, the effects of the virus do not appear to be severe. 

[Bianca]

Overreaction charge



There have been no cases of swine flu in Egypt.

Pig-farming and consumption is limited to Egypt's Christian minority, estimated at 10% of the population.

On Saturday, health officials began the slaughter in earnest, moving in on a city slum where rubbish collectors are said to keep around 60,000 pigs.

The slaughter is expected to take around a month.

Officials say the cull is aimed at bringing order to the country's pig-rearing industry, so that in future animals are not reared on rubbish tips but on proper farms.

The BBC's Christian Fraser in Cairo says the government has been criticised for overreacting to the threat, but it was also criticised for responding too slowly to the bird flu crisis two years ago.

When bird flu appeared in the country in 2006 mass culls were carried out but at least 22 humans died from the disease. 

[Bianca]

                                    Egypt pig farmers clash with police over slaughter
           



 

by Samer el-Atrush
May 3, 2009
CAIRO
(AFP)

– Egyptian riot police clashed on Sunday with stone-throwing pig farmers who were trying to prevent their animals being taken away for slaughter as part of a mass nationwide cull.

Between 300 and 400 residents of the hilly Moqattam slum district of Cairo, where mostly Coptic Christian scrap merchants raise pigs, hurled stones and bottles at police.

Anti-riot police replied by firing rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, most of them youths.

An AFP correspondent said the protesters ransacked a police post and an officer fired warning shots in the air.

Seven policemen were slightly injured, a security official said, while at least eight demonstrators were hurt, according to the correspondent and a medic.

An ambulance was on stand-by in Moqattam neighbourhood of Manshiyet Nasr, home to about 35,000 scrap and recycling merchants known as the "zabaleen" who raise some 60,000 pigs.

"They want to steal our livelihood," protested one of the farmers, Adel Izhak, before police started to take control of the district.

Similar troubles broke out in Khanka, north of the capital, security officials said. Police were already repelled from Khanka by stone-throwers on Wednesday after the controversial cull was announced.

Egypt began the cull of the nation's 250,000 pigs on Saturday, despite the World Health Organisation saying there was no evidence the animals were transmitting swine flu to humans.

The authorities are calling the slaughter a general health measure. No cases of swine flu, or influenza A(H1N1), have been reported in the Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world.

Egypt's pigs mostly belong to and are eaten by members of Egypt's Coptic Christian minority and are reared by rubbish collectors in Cairo's shantytowns. Islam bans the consumption of pork for the majority Muslims.

Egyptian animal rights activist Amina Abaza deplored the slaughter of pigs and said the decision to cull them was probably taken only because they belong to the Copts.

"They are doing all this although there is not one single case of swine flu in Egypt," Abaza told AFP, noting that Egypt has suffered from bird flu but no decision was taken to stem out poultry in the country.

"I wonder if this measure has not been taken because pigs belongs to Copts," she said.

Abaza, who is the founder of the first animal rights association in Egypt known as SPARE, said she believed that slaughtering the pigs was more "linked to religion than fear of the disease" itself.

The rubbish collectors, who used the pigs to dispose of organic waste and sell off some animals from their herds once a year, say the cull will affect their business and wipe out a crucial source of income.

Although no cases of swine flu have been reported in Egypt, the country has been battling an outbreak of bird flu for three years.

Twenty-six people have died in Egypt from the H5N1 strain of bird flu since it was first identified in early 2006 and the country has seen an increase in cases over the past two months.

The authorities have said it will take six months to carry out the pig slaughter and announced plans to import three machines to raise the culling capacity to 3,000 animals a day.

According to the government newspaper Al-Ahram, the authorities plan to pay out 100 pounds (14 dollars) for each male animal slaughtered and 250 pounds (35 dollars) for each female pig.