CAIRO – Amidst overflowing bags of garbage, Abu Sayed raises pigs, chickens, ducks, pigeons and goats on a small muddy plot of land in order to feed and clothe the extended family of 14 with whom he shares a blackened makeshift shack.
Since he doesn’t own a radio or a TV, we were the first to inform him that the Egyptian government decreed on Wednesday that his pigs, along with all 300,000 pigs in the country, had to be slaughtered as a precaution against the spread swine flu; despite the fact that no cases of the H1N1 swine flu virus have been reported here and it is spread by people, not pigs.
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| Charlene Gubash/NBC News |
| Egyptian farmer Abu Sayed looks at his pigs before he was forced to bring them to a slaughter house. |
Half of the families’ annual income comes from the sale of their small herd of 25 pigs, which usually sell for about $45 a piece.
Sayed looked away as he responded to the unwelcome news about the mandatory slaughter and said, “The interest of the country is more important than anything.”
But his brother Ahmed Mohammed was less magnanimous. “If they want to do this, they must find some other kind of income to replace it. All the family depends on the money we get from the sale of the pigs. My mother is sick. She needs money to get medicine for her diabetes and needs to get her eye infection treated.”
Encouraged by his brother’s frankness, Sayed ventured an opinion. “Before they take a decision, they have to see what people can do instead to make a living.”
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