When a new flu virus emerged in Mexico earlier this year, it was christened swine flu and the name led to panic measures in some countries in the mistaken belief that pigs were carriers. Egypt took the drastic – you might even say over-the-top step – of ordering the slaughter of all the country’s 300,000 pigs. A move that has had unfortunate repercussions in the capital Cairo.

In late April, the Egyptian government ordered the slaughter of all 300,000 pigs in the country. Health experts declared the slaughter unnecessary and it was criticised as the result of panic and institutional bias against the Christian minority who breed the pigs. And there was an outcry when video footage was released of the slaughter, showing pigs being buried alive or fed alive into a crusher.

Swine flu but no swine
Today, Egypt has 107 cases of swine flu - known in the Netherlands as Mexican flu - and no pigs. But the absence of pigs has had far-reaching and unintended consequences. Cairo’s garbage collectors used to feed the city’s organic waste to pigs and now their livelihood is endangered and the streets of the capital are filling up with trash.
 

Essential recyclers
There are around 30,000 zabaleen- or “garbage people”– in Cairo. They collect trash door to door throughout the city then haul it back to their neighbourhood on donkey-carts and pick-up trucks. Women and children squat in the dirt, sifting through piles of trash. Workshops use rudimentary machinery to recycle plastic, metal and cardboard. The zabaleen are so efficient that Cairo has one of the highest recycling rates in the world - around 80 percent. Pigs were an important link in this recycling process and the garbage collectors’ neighbourhood is so associated with the animals that its name, "El Zaraeeb," means "pig pens".
 

Cull “disastrous”
Almost all the garbage collectors belong to Egypt's Coptic Christian minority and Father Samaan is a respected community leader. He says the slaughter has been disastrous for his flock., 450 families worked with pigs and for some people, 50 to 100 percent of their income has disappeared. “Those who depended entirely on pigs, it's over, their life is miserable. It's a tragedy of immense proportions..”. he says. We have 450 families that worked with pigs.
 

Waste piling up
But not only have the garbage collectors lost a source of income, Cairo has lost an important way of disposing of its organic waste. Now that organic waste is of no use to them, the garbage collectors are leaving most of it in empty lots and garbage dumps around town. Cairo is a city of 16 million and it produces at least 800 tons of trash a day. The trash is piling up fast and will keep on doing so until an alternative is found to the four-footed disposal units.

Ingenious solution
But the garbage collectors' ingenuity may yet find a way round the loss of their pigs. Hannah Fathi Rostom is a young man from the area and he’s come up with a creative solution for the disposal of organic waste. Through his work with an environmental NGO, he learned to make biogas tanks. These tanks use animal excrement and bacteria to turn organic trash into methane gas. Rostom built one on the roof of his house and uses the gas he produces to cook. Eventually, he hopes, the community could use this technology on a much larger scale to replace their seemingly irreplaceable pigs.|

Ursula Lindsay reports from Cairo for Newsline: