At the time of writing this post, there are 6 confirmed cases of swine flu now in Israel. Out of fear that the virus might spread to Epypt, authorities there have ordered the slaughter of the country’s 300,000 pigs, reports the Associated Press.
“It has been decided to immediately start slaughtering all the pigs in Egypt using the full capacity of the country’s slaughterhouses,” Health Minister Hatem el-Gabaly told reporters after a Cabinet meeting with President Hosni Mubarak.
While it’s not exactly clear how swine flu first started –- reports are that it “jumped” to humans in Mexico where the animals where being raised in squalor (and in mass feeding operations) – it is still not sure if killing all pigs will effect the transmission of the flu.
This is TreeHugger’s take on swine flu:
“But where did it originate? David Kirby has some ideas, and they involve “confined animal feeding operations”, or CAFOs. There are hundreds of such operations with pigs in Mexico. The more animals get clustered together, and the more time they spend in that state, the more viruses will spread between them—and the thousands of humans that work at the CAFOs. Free range proponents take note–this could’ve been prevented with more sanitary animal living conditions.”
A Reuter’s report, via the blog ConnectAfrica, also from today, says that Egypt is “just considering” the mass slaughter, and this has been prompted mainly because the pigs in the country are raised in terrible conditions:
““The question now is should we kill them or relocate them, and the prevailing idea now is to kill the existing (pigs) and of course compensate their owners,” cabinet spokesman Magdy Rady said on Wednesday. He put the number of pigs that could be culled at between 300,000 and 400,000, and said a decision was expected in days.
““If you see the conditions of the swine farms in Egypt, they are not healthy at all. They are hazards in themselves, even without the swine flu. That’s why people are really getting afraid,” he told Reuters.”
Will culling all the world’s pigs stop this virus from reaching pandemic proportions? When will us humans learn that when we don’t treat nature with respect, and raise animals with dignity, that nature will just bite us back.
::Associated Press via Jerusalem Post
[image via matatabby]
Update: As of April 30, the cases of swine flu in Israel has been downgraded from 6 to 2
Author: Karin Kloosterman
Karin Kloosterman is an award-winning journalist and publisher that founded Green Prophet to unite a prosperous Middle East. She shows through her work that positive, inspiring dialogue creates action that impacts people, business and planet. She has published in thought-leading newspapers and magazines globally, owns an IoT tech chip patent, and is part of teams that build world-changing products to make agriculture and our planet more sustainable. Reach out directly to [email protected]
One day if this keeps up we will hit the point of no return with mother nature..
This is a good solution at this time to execute this animals,because it is like a container of diseases
I’m muslim this animal forbidden for me but also I’ve a christian freinds doesn’t eat this animal also
for this people who wonder about the Egyptian government deceion this not for christians or muslims but for Egyptians health,did you know that this animals in egypt grows up in rabbish?
thanks
While the world understands the swine flu isn’t really about the pigs, Egypt goes on slaughtering:
http://www.getreligion.org/?p=11780
I think that the Egyptian government cannot tolerate the native Christian culture in their country. Next time, as an excuse, the Egyptian government will burn the Christians alive before it’s too late. America must create a Christian state for Christians in Egypt as the Americans did for Muslims in Yugoslavia. If the pig is bad, the person who created the pig is worse than the pig.
Following this ‘logic’, would the Egyptians have killed all the Legionaires because of Legionaires Disease?
DsCs – This kissing post, based on recommendations from the Lebanese Health Minister, was a joke.
http://greenprophet.com/2009/04/29/8638/swine-flu-kiss/
I have no secret desires to kill off humanity, nor do I sleep in any of the conditions you mention above. I happen to like feather pillows.
It does hurt my soul, however, to see animals being raised (and culled) in inhumane ways. I’ve worked on a farm, and I see how dairy cows are kept in cramp conditions, their calves pulled away from their mothers months before they should stop weaning to live in a 1×2 meter cage. Have you ever heard the cry of a calve for its mother, while we humans lap up its milk. It’s very very disturbing. Then there are the antibiotic injections…
This makes me wonder if it’s an example of the Egyptian government seizing on the opportunity to rid its country of pigs, and its collection of pig farmers. There’s absolutely no need to kill all these animals, so it’s either a really really stupid move on part of the Egyptians, or a well orchestrated purge under a thin veil of legitimacy.
ORGANIC?!?!?! Show me an inorganic pig, and we’ll talk…. Free range animals are less safe to eat than commercially grown animals, because you can never be sure WHAT free range animals have eaten. Ever heard of the “milk sick” that killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother? That is because the animal ranged free and ate food which made its milk poisonous. In preceding centuries that kind of thing was NOT all that uncommon. It is, after all, just a dumb ANIMAL, people. Saying that the disease spreads faster in crowded commercial farming conditions is a silly banality; it STILL doesn’t tell us where “swine” flu came from.
I also saw a missive on this site about not kissing in order to stop the spread of swine flu. Saliva KILLS the virus you dopes. You have to BREATHE it in to catch it. Keep kissing… just hold your breath.
Either Green freaks knowingly propose stuff that is dangerous to people (because they all secretly have a wet dream about massive kill-offs of the human species when they lay down to sleep on their non-bird-feather, hypo-allergenice pillows), or they actually have an honest, knee-jerk reaction to ANYTHING that humans do as being negative. In either case, we all tend to forget that since the advent of mass commercial food production around 1890, the average life expectancy has nearly doubled. This “organic” fever as a magic bullet to a safer food supply is getting to the point of being a mental disorder.. Its nuts.
This gives me terrible memories of the mass slaughter of cattle in the UK a few years back – what was it – foot and mouth disease…. needless, inhumane, knee jerk reactions…. and do these Countries learn anything after outbreaks & culls? No, agriculture and food production rolls on the same, with intensive cattle rearing, non-organic, non-free range practises, which of course will expose animals both to illness & miserableness…..
…but underneath all the hysteria & media panic mongering here in the UK, some small sane voices of non-Govt scientists are emphatically saying this strain of flu CANNOT be caught from animals – pigs, pork, or meat products. This fact may not be so relevant in Israel, but the message needs to be heard in Egypt & around the world.
The Christian Egyptians.
I’am in the US and we have over 100? case and not much on slaughtering them he. It would be nice to find a better way to resolve this than killing them all.
You are right you must treat nature with respect, or they will bite back.
Chris
Michael i’m not sure, but i don’t think all of them are being eaten .. they’re also used for cleaning ( i think ) .. and beside that, not all of the inhabitants are muslims.. that plays a role 🙂
I’m surprised that there are so many pigs in a Muslim country like Egypt. Wonder who eats all that swine…