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Residents of a Cairo slum resist efforts to slaughter all the nation's pigs to guard against swine flu.

The Associated Press May 4, 2009

CAIRO — Egyptian police and armored cars charged into a crowd of 1,000 irate pig farmers armed with stones and bottles, leaving 12 people injured as residents of a Cairo slum resisted government efforts to slaughter the nation's pigs to guard against swine flu.

Cairo security chief Maj. Gen. Ismail Shaer said 14 people were arrested. Seven police were among the injured in the clashes with largely Christian garbage collectors who raise pigs on the refuse and live in the teeming slums of Manishyet Nasr outside the capital.

The farmers blocked the road leading to their pig pens and hurled rocks and bottles at police, who responded by charging them with armored cars and firing tear gas. Some 200 policemen then surrounded the neighborhood, backed by a half dozen police trucks.

Egypt last week ordered the slaughter of all the country's 300,000 pigs even though no cases of swine flu have been reported here. The World Health Organization has said the move was unnecessary because the virus is being spread through humans. On Sunday, the organization reiterated its message that pork, ham and sausages are all safe to eat.

Authorities have now expanded the rationale for the slaughter beyond swine flu to a larger campaign against unsanitary pig farming conditions, particularly in the Cairo slums where the garbage collectors live.

The campaign has been met from the start by protests and resistance from pig owners. The consumption and raising of pigs is largely restricted to the country's Christian minority, estimated at 10 percent of the population. Muslims consider pork unclean and generally do not eat it.

Cairo's predominantly Christian population of garbage collectors, known as the zabaleen, roam the streets of the sprawling city's wealthier neighborhoods collecting its garbage. They bring the refuse back to their homes and dump it in their courtyards, sorting through it for material to recycle. Pigs and other animals feed off the organic matter while the rest is reprocessed in crude workshops.

Isaac Mikhail, the head of the garbage collectors association, said 65,000 pigs live in the slum of Manishyet Nasr, providing a livelihood for some 55,000 people in the area.