Egypt orders immediate slaughter of all pigs

[El-Basha]

Civil unrest in Cairo

http://copts.com/english1/index.php/...ter/#more-3095

Egypt pig farmers & Police clash over slaughter

May 3, 2009 8:33 pm admin2 Egptian News, Coptic News, General

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.

”Egyptian riot police clashed on Sunday with stone-throwing pig farmers who were trying to prevent their animals from being taken away for slaughter as part of a mass nationwide cull that has split the country and raised charges or religious persecution.


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 even as other pig farmers called on Pope Shenouda III to intervene against the “injustice.”
Anti-riot police d rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, most of them youth. Witnesses said the protesters ransacked a police post and an officer d warning shots in the air.Seven policemen were slightly injured, a security official said, while at least eight demonstrators were hurt, according to an AFP correspondent and a medic.

“They want to steal our livelihood,” protested Adel Izhak, a resident of the Moqattam neighborhood of Manshiyet Nasr, home to about 35,000 scrap and recycling merchants known as the “zabaleen” who raise some 60,000 pigs.
Pig farmers and rubbish collectors assembled at the neighborhood’s church, where a priest tried to convince them to surrender the pigs.

“What have you accomplished? Violence begets violence.The government has agreed to compensate all of you,” Father Samaan, flanked by government representatives, said.

“They will give you compensation,” he added, in a speech that was often interrupted by angry farmers.
Condoned by Copt
Earlier in the week Pope Shenouda, head of the Coptic church, remarked that Christians did not eat pork meat, according to al-Masry al-Youm, which was criticized by some as giving a green light to the government-sanctioned slaughter.

“Slaughtering animals to prevent the spread of a disease is a strategy already adopted twice in Egypt to deal with mad cow disease and bird flu. In those cases, the owners of any animal culled got compensation, so we hope this will also happen with pig farmers” Dr. Tharwat Bassily, Under-Secretary of the General Confessional Council told al-Masry al-Youm.

“This shows how just and firm the state is,” he said, adding that the Church was not involved in the government’s decision and that the Pope’s remarks simply reflected the fact that Copts in Egypt eat very little pork.

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.
There were conflicting reports over whether Egyptian pig farmers would receive compensation for their slaughtered livestock.

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

Last week Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza said that since the farmers would be allowed to sell the pork meat there would be no need for compensation, though some media reported that compensation for pig owners could reach 1,000 Egyptian pounds ($180 dollars) at some point.

He did not address how the farmers would sell the meat if the population consumes little pork and a surfeit would likely drive down prices.
Farmer workers, who earn 20-22 pounds ($3.64-$4) per day, have sought to distance themselves from the zabaleen because their pigs are fed potatoes and bread and are subject to spot tests by the Ministry of Health, according to the independent Daily News Egypt.

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.
Ferreting out why
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, who is the founder of the first animal rights association in Egypt known as SPARE, said.

Egypt began the cull of the nation’s 250,000 pigs on Saturday, despite the World Health Organization saying there was no evidence the animals were transmitting swine flu to humans and admissions by Egyptian authorities the cull is a general health measure rather than a precaution against swine flu.

“The authorities took advantage of the situation to resolve the question of disorderly pig rearing in Egypt,” health ministry spokesman Abdelrahman Shahine told AFP Thursday. No cases of swine flu have been detected in Egypt.

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

[El-Basha]

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsM...5421R020090504
(Writing by Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

CAIRO (Reuters) -

Egypt garbagemen clash with police over pig cull

Egyptian police d tear gas on Sunday at garbage collectors who pelted them with rocks and bottles over fears they had come to seize their pigs as a precaution against a new flu virus.
At least 10 people were injured in the clashes in Manshiet Nasr, a shantytown on Cairo's outskirts where residents burnt trash barriers in the street to keep police at bay. Security sources said up to 15 people were detained.
Three police were also injured in clashes with pig farmers in another area of the capital.
Egypt, already hit hard by bird flu, ordered the slaughter of all Egypt's roughly 300,000 to 400,000 pigs on April 29 as a precaution against the H1N1 swine flu virus, a move the United Nations said was "a real mistake."
Egypt, which has not reported any H1N1 cases, fears another flu virus could spread quickly in a country where most of the roughly 80 million population live in the densely packed Nile Valley, many in crowded slums around Cairo.
One security source said police had gone to the Manshiet Nasr neighbourhood, a mix of concrete and brick apartment blocks and makeshift shanties, to seize pigs belonging to garbage collectors who make their living sorting trash.
But another security source said police were simply surrounding the neighbourhood to prevent residents from moving their animals outside the neighbourhood to hide them from officials seeking to enforce a cull.
"We serve the people and they come and cut off our livelihood. The pigs don't have any disease. The country is diseased. Take samples from the pigs and if they have disease, we would cull them," Manshiet Nasr resident Marzouk Badr Adli said after the clashes, complaining about the cull.
The new virus strain -- a mix of swine, avian and human viruses -- is being spread by people, not pigs. But culling swine, largely viewed as unclean in Muslim Egypt, could help quell any public panic in the most populous Arab country.
Pigs are mainly raised by the Christian minority, and government officials have complained that some farmers are trying to hide their pigs, making it harder for officials to carry out the cull.
The World Health Organisation has identified 787 H1N1 infections in 17 countries, including in Egypt's neighbour Israel, and said there were 19 confirmed deaths in Mexico.