The Last Stand of the Egyptian Pork Industry

A piece in Al-Masry al-Youm (English) on the last days of the Egyptian pork industry, as we approach the first anniversary of the great pig cull of 2009. In a few weeks, the country's biggest pork processor will run out of its stock of frozen meat, and with the herds virtually eliminated, the industry is dying.

As the story notes, though the pig farmers themselves received financial compensation for the culled pigs, the others who made their living off pigs, from the zabbalin trash collectors to the meat packers and processors, were not so lucky.

And of course, as the names of the various pork processors quoted in the story make clear, this was a Christian industry and the Coptic population has been hit hardest by it, since the Muslim majority do not eat pork.

And Egypt had many cases of Swine Flu anyway, none of it apparently vectored through swine.