2009 swine flu pandemic actions concerning pigs
Many of these slaughters occurred in Muslim countries, and religious restrictions on the consumption of pork have been cited as influencing the decision to take such action.
[3] According to researchers cited by The New York Times, "based on its genetic structure, the new virus is without question a type of swine influenza, derived originally from a strain that lived in pigs".
[5] International health officials from the CDC, WHO, FAO, OIE and other food organizations have reaffirmed that pork is safe to eat and hogs are not to blame for the epidemic.
[6] Some U.S. officials speculated that the bans may be more about "market share than health concerns," and were costing the hog industry millions of dollars every week.
[7] Dave Warner, a spokesman for the Washington-based National Pork Producers Council, pointed out that long-standing disagreements with China and Russia may be a factor.
[11] At the beginning of June 2009, the U.S. Agriculture Department said it would launch a pilot surveillance project to look for new strains of flu virus in pigs.
Some experts claim that global health officials have underestimated the risk that pig herds might be a source of new influenza strains, choosing instead to focus on the threat of bird flu.
[12] As reported by The Daily Telegraph, Afghanistan's only pig has been taken off display in the Kabul Zoo and "quarantined" as a response to visitor's fears about contracting swine flu.
[14] On May 2, Canadian Food Inspection Agency executive vice-president Brian Evans announced that an infected Alberta farm worker recently returned from Mexico had apparently passed the virus to a swine herd in his care.
[19][20] This decision reportedly raised religious tensions since pig owners are mostly in the Coptic Christian minority (5% to 10% of the population) in the predominantly Islamic nation.
Egyptian human rights lawyer Nadia Tawfiq claimed that the pig extermination was a form of attack on Christians.
On the next day in Cairo, an estimated 300 Coptic Christian residents of the Manshiyat Nasr district set up blockades on the street in attempt to keep government officers from confiscating their pigs,[21] which led to clashes with the police.
Philip Lymbery the chief executive of the group was quoted saying that "Britons and people from around the world have joined the international storm of protest against this atrocity in Egypt, with many saying they'll no longer consider Egypt as a possible holiday destination,"[24] After a coordination meeting about the flu on April 27, 2009, the Indonesian government halted the importation of pigs and initiated the examination of 9 million pigs in Indonesia.
[27] The health ministry said that killing the pigs would serve no purpose in preventing an outbreak in the country that has no reported cases of swine flu.
[39] As of June 2009 it was reported that Flu will halt import of pigs [40] by Arab countries, but they ban exporting porks to America.
