Apparently living under the belief that the human-swine-bird flu strain that’s sweepin’ the globe travels by collective unconscious or some other such crap, Egypt has decided to slaughter all its pigs.
Some farmers have refused to cooperate, and Health Ministry workers have thus far left without carrying out orders in those cases. By the way, there have been no cases in Egypt yet. Washing your hands, sneezing or coughing into your elbow, staying home when you’re sick? Sure. Killing 300,000 animals because you’re caught up in hysteria? Way classy, Egypt.
While searching for pig pictures, I found this link—click it for an overdose of cute. Pigs in tiger costumes! (They were being nursed by a tiger.)
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Truly horrendous! Those pictures of the piggies are sooooo cute! This is mostly hype, for what reason I cannot figure out. Interesting fact : During the 1976 Swine Flu Scare NO ONE died from Swine Flu but 500 people were paralyzed and 32 died from the Vaccination! Great post.
That is ridiculous! People are carries now, too. I don’t imagine they’re planning on killing any people to avoid the outbreak, right? It’s absurd that a life can be treated with so little regard, let alone 300,000 lives.
There’s so much about the handling of this thing that annoys me. But this is probably the dumbest.
The only positive so far has been for Roche (Tamiflu) stockholders.
way to go world ! let”s kill the piglets, therefore driving up the costs of the other meat products and so on. It’s a wonder humans have survived at all. We still have rat infestations all over the world, but we are worried about pork.
The Christian (pork-eating) minority in Egypt is very small–it won’t affect the market much. But it does wipe out those farmers, who are most likely going to start over again (if they can). It’s not like they’re going to find something else to do–can’t turn a pig farm into a veg farm overnight.
They were also spraying chemicals around pig farms. No idea what those were or what the effects of those will be. And it will not prevent a single human from getting sick. It just goes to show that 1. governments will do pretty much anything for the show of “we’re doing something to help,” and 2. farm animals are treated like products, objects, things. They can be disposed of without a second thought.
i want a pet pig soooo bad. i’d name it Ralph.
I picture you with a pig about the size and demeanor of Hamster.
This is a culture that already thinks pigs are the dirtiest, lowliest creatures. Not too much of a leap for them to conclude it is time to eradicate them.