Why are pig farmers in Egypt irate with police?”
Egypt pressed ahead Monday with plans to kill all pigs in the country, amid rising concerns there that the animal considered unclean by Islam may cause a swine-flu epidemic. Officials in the majority Muslim nation say they are targeting the estimated 250,000 pigs raised by Egypt’s minority Christian community as a public-health measure, despite international scientific opinion that the animals don’t spread the disease to humans. But what was intended to be a vigorous response to the global flu scare has instead highlighted gaps in Egypt’s public-health policy and acted as a lightning rod for religious tension. On Monday, government veterinarians visited Christian neighborhoods to mark animals for the cull, a process that could take a year due to the lack of slaughterhouses authorized by religious authorities to handle pork. “I don’t see the logic in the government decision. Our pigs aren’t sick but they want to kill them anyway,” said Hala Morcos, managing director of Maison Morcos, on
Egyptian police and armored cars charged into a crowd of a 1,000 irate pig farmers armed with stones and bottles, leaving 12 people injured as residents of a Cairo slum resisted government efforts to slaughter the nation’s pigs to guard against swine flu. Cairo security chief Maj. Gen. Ismail Shaer said 14 people were arrested. Seven police were among the injured in the clashes with largely Christian garbage collectors who raise pigs on the refuse and live in the teeming slums of Manishyet Nasr outside the capital. The farmers blocked the road leading to their pig pens and hurled rocks and bottles at police, who responded by charging them with armored cars and firing tear gas. Some 200 policemen then surrounded the neighborhood backed by a half dozen police trucks. Egypt last week ordered the slaughter of all the country’s 300,000 pigs even though no cases of swine flu have been reported here. The World Health Organization has said the move was unnecessary because the virus is being sp
