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Egypt's call to kill pigs amid flu scare ridiculed

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-05-01 19:12

Veterinarians examine a pig to check if it is infected by the swine flu at the main slaughterhouse in Cairo April 30, 2009. Egypt, hit hard by bird flu, has ordered the slaughter of every pig herd in the country as a precaution against swine flu, a step the United Nations said was a mistake. [Agencies]

Many accused the government of not taking precautions when bird flu first appeared in Asia in 2003. When the first case appeared in Egypt in 2006, the government carried out mass bird culls, but the disease has killed more than two dozen people since.

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With the new flu scare, the government "took a precautionary step because they were afraid there would be a case here, and then they would face questions about why they didn't take this step," said Nader Noureddin, an agricultural resources expert at Cario University's Agricultural College.

The government likely felt confident slaughtering pigs would not spark any public backlash in predominantly Muslim Egypt, where the majority of the population does not eat pork. Pig raising and consumption is limited to the country's Christian minority, estimated at 10 percent of the population.

Still, the opposition Muslim Brotherhood was critical of the slaughter on the grounds it was not thought out.

"The problem is that the government here deals with things in emotional ways," said Essam el-Erian, a top Brotherhood leader. "It acts with the memory of what happened during the bird flu crisis."

Coptic Christian leaders - including the pope - condoned the slaughter, and two Coptic lawmakers were among the most vocal supporters.

But pig farmers - overwhelmingly Christian - were angered. Government efforts to start the slaughter Wednesday were met with farmers who hurled stones at Health Ministry trucks.

"This is the livelihood of a segment of the people," said Youssef Sidhom, an editor of the Al-Watani newspaper and prominent Coptic figure. "You can't just do something on the national level and ignore a segment of the population."

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