Egyptian farmers protest mandatory swine slaughter

By: Latoyia Kimbrough
According to an article on the CNN website pig farmers threw rocks at police officers in Cairo, Egypt, on last Sunday because health workers gathered the farmers' herds for slaughter. The government states that taking the pigs were a precaution against the spread of swine flu. Local media reported that the number of farmers conflicting with police was in the hundreds. The government decided to slaughter all pigs regardless of whether they were infected or not and this has caused a lot of controversy because there have been no confirmed cases of the virus in Egypt. According to the U.S.-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, humans cannot get the swine flu virus by eating pork. Egyptian officials are doing this because the avian flu still exists in the country and this is do to the fact that they did not take sufficient protective measures when that disease was first discovered in 2006. The health ministry told CNN that they are freezing all the disease-free meat and plan to give it back to its owners once the ban on pigs is lifted but according to ministry sources the country does not have enough facilities to store all the frozen meat.