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Egyptian farmers protest mandatory swine slaughter
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-05-04 09:54 Pig farmers threw rocks at police officers in Cairo, Egypt, on Sunday as health workers gathered the farmers' herds for slaughter in what the government says is a precaution against the spread of swine flu, an interior ministry official said.
The Egyptian government required all pigs in the country be killed, citing a need to prevent the spread of swine flu.
Experts have criticized the Egyptian government's move, announced last week, to slaughter all pigs regardless of whether they are infected. There have been no confirmed cases of the virus in Egypt. And according to the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, humans cannot get the swine flu virus, known to scientists as the H1N1 virus, by eating pork. The CDC says human infection from pigs most likely occurs when people are in close proximity to sick animals, such as in pig barns. But Egyptian officials cite how avian flu still exists in the country because, they say, the government did not take sufficient protective measures when that disease was first discovered there in 2006. Most Egyptian pig farmers are Coptic Christians, a group that makes up about 10 percent of the 80 million people in the mostly Muslim nation. Coptic Christians do not observe the Muslim ban on eating pork, and historically they have coexisted peacefully with the Muslim majority in Egypt. |
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