Animals

Egypt's Pigs: Beaten, Stoned, and Burned Alive (Part 1)

by Kelly Garbato

categories: Farmed Animals, Slaughter, Animal Rights

Published June 23, 2009 @ 06:37AM PT

At the end of April, I wrote briefly about Egypt's plans to slaughter all its hundreds of thousands of pigs ("Mass Swine-Flu Killing in Egypt and Remembering All the Pigs"); here, Kelly catches up on what has been happening since then. -S. Ernst

In early May, Egyptian authorities initiated a massive "cull" of the nation's farmed pig population - estimated at 350,000 to 400,000 pigs, most of whom reside in the capital city of Cairo - ostensibly to protect its citizens from the swine flu epidemic. This despite the fact that, at the time the "cull" was announced, Egypt had yet to report a single case of swine flu, either porcine or human. (At the time of this writing, Egypt is reporting 26 cases.)

Like many "culls" undertaken in times of panic, this mass slaughter is particularly gruesome and cruel. (Though, I should note, differing only in degree from the suffering inflicted on pigs in U.S. factory farms and slaughterhouses on a daily basis.) Writes the WSPA,

“WSPA has received shocking first hand accounts from our member societies in Egypt of the cruel and inhumane treatment of pigs there. Our supporters will be shocked by the graphic footage of this brutal operation now available on the internet.”

Pigs being hit with iron bars, scooped up into bulldozers and flung into pits to be burned alive with chemicals [including disinfectant]; these are the truly distressing visuals that appeared as the Egyptian media started to report on the cruel methods being used in the cull.

(You can view footage of the "culls" on You Tube.)

After an initial outcry - from both international animal welfare groups and the "owners" of the pigs - the Egyptian government shifted its rationale for the "culls" from "swine flu" to more general "public health" measures. However, the "culls" have not ceased; according to the WSPA, which visited Cairo in May, about half of the city's pigs had been slaughtered as of May 27th. While the group reported that the "cull" had ended on June 3rd, a June 16th update indicated that pigs are still being killed.

While at first glance this story might seem like just one in a long line of government overreactions to a (human-created) pandemic threat, there might be an element of religious discrimination involved as well.

Consider the following story, which appeared in a recent edition of Egypt Today:

Home to at least 30,000 people, Manshiet Nasser’s community of zabaleen, or garbage collectors, is the largest of the nation’s so-called garbage cities. In a capital that produces some 25,000 tons of refuse each day, the zabaleen are grassroots recyclers who earn a living selling plastic, glass and cardboard to companies that will reprocess the material into new goods. The organic waste goes to feed the zabaleen’s other industry — pig farms that are the sole supplier of the nation’s market for pork products. [...]

Because consuming pork is taboo in Islam, pig farming is an occupation carried out solely by Christians — evidenced by the crosses that adorn almost every home, coffee shop and work area in the neighborhood. The cull has raised tension between the Coptic minority and the Muslim majority.

“We feel we are discriminated against because all the people working in this industry, either [in] farming, garbage collecting or selling pork, are Copts,” says Rizk. “[The government has] wanted to get rid of the pigs in Egypt for a long time, and now it is their chance to do it, to end this business of pig farming here in Egypt. They cannot do this with our pigs and our resources.”

The families that occupy Manshiet Nasser moved there in the early 1970s when it was just a desert; they settled and have been the dominant community in the area ever since. Most of the people there live in crowded houses with their extended families. “I have 22 people living with me in the same house, and whenever we needed money, we would sell a pig and use the money for the time being,” says Ibrahim Israel Awad, a garbage collector and pig farmer. He says that the sale of a pig typically earned him approximately LE 6 per kilogram of its weight.

Awad explains that his entire family — regardless of age or gender — works in the garbage industry, separating the organic materials from the solid waste in the trash they collect.

How might life in an Islamic society shape the fate of Coptic Christian farmers - and their pigs?

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Edit: Part 2, "Religious Discrimination and the Killing of Egypt's Pigs," can now be found here.