April 30, 2009

Egypt on Wednesday (April 29) ordered the immediate cull of all pigs in the country as a precaution against swine flu, sparking clashes with farmers resisting the first such move in an increasingly anxious world.

"It has been ordered to immediately begin the slaughter of all herds of pigs in Egypt," Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali told reporters after meeting President Hosni Mubarak.

He said slaughterhouses would begin the cull immediately at the fastest rate possible, as pig owners expressed outrage.

Clashes were reported in Khanka, 25 kilometres north of the capital, with pig raisers setting up road blocks and smashing the windscreens of veterinary services' vehicles as they sought to take people's pigs away.

"Police and veterinary services had stones thrown at them when they went to a pig-rearing area and had to withdraw, without taking any pigs," a security official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Gabali said Egypt - one of the countries' most affected by the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu and where 26 people have died as a result of that disease - was taking the threat of swine flu "very seriously".

Further precautionary measures such as launching an awareness campaign and increasing production of protective masks and the antiviral drug Tamiflu would also be taken, he said.

Egypt's agriculture ministry says there are 250,000 pigs in the country, belonging to and eaten by members of the Coptic Christian minority.

Pig raisers in Cairo's slums - mostly Christian rubbish collectors - were outraged by the country's reaction to swine flu.

"Our pigs are healthy. They are our capital and they have no diseases," said Adel Ishak, a rubbish collector from Manshiet Nasser, northeast of Cairo.

"How will they replace the capital if these pigs are killed?" the father of 10 told AFP.

Ayman Saad, who raises pigs in Batn al-Baqqar, said the authorities had told him he would receive compensation of about US$105 per animal.

"How long will the compensation feed us for? A year? Is the government going to pay for our children's education?" Ishak complained.

There was no official announcement as to if and how compensation would be delivered.

The World Organization for Animal Health said the virus had not been found in animals so far.

Nonetheless, Egypt's lower house of parliament on Tuesday called for the pigs to be slaughtered instead of relocated outside residential areas, as had first been proposed.

The US-based group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said in a statement that "killing all the pigs in Egypt is not a way to tackle the swine flu problem".

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday that Egypt's experience in dealing with avian flu has prepared it to handle the swine flu threat.

"Because you have avian flu, your surveillance system is much more alert and doctors seeing patients will keep it in mind," Hussein Gezairy, WHO's regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, told reporters.

WHO's acting assistant director General Keiji Fukuda said on Wednesday that there was no evidence that pigs were spreading the flu to humans.

"We don't see any evidence that anyone is getting infected from pigs," Fukuda said in a telephone news conference from Geneva. "This appears to be a virus which is moving from person to person."