The Dictator and the Swine……….
“Egypt pig-cull increasingly viewed as gross mistake. The Egyptian government’s decision to cull all of the country’s 300,000 pigs in May 2009 is increasingly being viewed by experts and officials as a gross mistake as piles of organic waste the pigs once ate accumulate in Cairo’s streets, posing serious health hazards. The month-long cull was ostensibly to stem the spread of H1N1 influenza, but the government later said it was simply a general health measure. The cull hit the livelihoods of 70,000 former pig farmers and unofficial rubbish collectors and their families in the Cairo area, according to local NGO Association for the Protection of the Environment…………. In Cairo, the livelihoods of unofficial rubbish collectors - known as ‘Zabalin’ to Egyptians - and pig farmers were very much intertwined as the former collected organic waste from the capital’s streets and sold it to farmers to feed their pigs. With the pigs gone, the `Zabalin’ have lost a major source of income and have no incentive to collect the waste from the streets, they say………. In Cairo, the livelihoods of unofficial rubbish collectors - known as ‘Zabalin’ to Egyptians - and pig farmers were very much intertwined as the former collected organic waste from the capital’s streets and sold it to farmers to feed their pigs. With the pigs gone, the `Zabalin’ have lost a major source of income and have no incentive to collect the waste from the streets, they say…………..”
Last spring, I said they were going after the wrong pigs, that Egypt's problems were not with the two-legged ones. I said it was a bad mistake to kill all those pigs. The decision was not really taken because of the swine flu, by that time every idiot from Cairo to Aswan knew that one did not catch the flu from pigs. It was partly to appease the fundamentalists.
Cheers
mhg
Mon Email
Comments