Egypt’s pig farmers

As one of our commenters said, Egypt’s pig farmers are all Christians, swine being unclean for Muslims. The swine flu scare is being used as a pretext to harm Christians, as Egypt is demanding that all pigs be destroyed, even though the disease is not spread from contact with the animals (much less from eating pork, as some people are imagining). Those Christians are protesting, to the point of rioting. From Egyptian farmers protest mandatory swine slaughter – CNN.com:

Most Egyptian pig farmers are Coptic Christians, a group that makes up about 10 percent of the 80 million people in the mostly Muslim nation. Coptic Christians do not observe the Muslim ban on eating pork, and historically they have coexisted peacefully with the Muslim majority in Egypt.

The farmers also work in the garbage industry and use their daily collections to feed their herds, which number about 300,000 animals in the country.