What a waste!

Egypt's pigs

What a waste
May 7th 2009 | CAIRO
From The Economist print edition

Is it wise to kill the capital’s rubbish-ridding pigs?
屠杀首都的垃圾清理猪明智吗？
IN A city not much noted for efficiency, Cairo’s traditional rubbish collectors, or Zabbaleen, have long been something of a paragon. While failing to keep Egypt’s teeming capital very clean, the Zabbaleen, nearly all of them members of Egypt’s 6m-plus Coptic Christian minority, do an excellent job of processing waste. Trucking refuse to the half-dozen rag-picking settlements that ring the city, they carefully sift out recyclable glass, paper and plastic. The rest is fed to pigs.

在一个并不是以效能著称的城市里，开罗的传统垃圾清理工（扎巴林人）长期以来一直是一个典范。尽管没有让埃及富裕的首都特别地洁净，但咋巴林人在垃圾处理方面做的相当漂亮。几乎所有的扎巴林人都信仰科普特基督教，埃及基督教是一个教徒超过600万的少数教派。六个垃圾分拣点的垃圾卡车环绕着开罗市，他们仔细地分拣着可回收利用的玻璃瓶，废纸和塑料。剩下的喂猪。

But in response to the global threat of swine flu, Egypt’s government has decreed that the pigs, perhaps 250,000 of them, must go. Teams of surgical-mask-wearing pig-hunters were met at first with a barrage of rocks, bottles and manure hurled by the angry Zabbaleen. Now, backed by riot police and promising compensation, they are systematically hauling the beasts off for slaughter, a process expected to take several months.

为了应对全球范围的猪流感威胁，埃及政府已经下令除去大约250000头猪。佩戴外科手术口罩的猎猪者们一开始就遭到枪林弹雨般的袭击，扎巴林人向他们投掷的石头、瓶子和粪便。现在，有了防暴警察的支持和充满希望的赔偿，他们正在有条不紊地捕获并猎杀着那些猪，预期这一过程将会持续几个月。

With no cases of swine flu reported in Egypt to date, officials from both the UN and the World Health Organisation have condemned Egypt’s porcicide as a drastic overreaction. Some disgruntled Copts, who have long complained of petty discrimination and fear the influence of Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, say the move unfairly targets them. Others, noting that Egypt’s minister of health consulted Coptic clergy before announcing the cull, see it as a plot by wealthy businessmen to uproot the Zabbaleen and seize their valuable land on the edge of the city. Still more rumours explain the government’s swinophobia as a ploy to distract attention from other failings, such as not paying a promised salary bonus.

在埃及至今还没有猪流感病例报告，联合国和世卫组织的官员都谴责埃及的屠猪行为反应过激。一些心怀不满的科普特人，长久以来一直抱怨受到歧视并惧怕伊斯兰组织（如穆斯林兄弟会）的势力，认为此次不公平的行动目标指向了他们。另外一些科普特人，注意到埃及的卫生部长在宣布这次猎猪行动之前咨询了科普特教士，认为这是富人们为了铲除咋巴林人并抢夺他们在城市周边宝贵土地的阴谋。还有谣传说政府的猎猪行为是一个转移公众注意其失职之处（如没有兑现承诺的薪水）的一个策略。

Yet most of the 80m-odd Egyptians seem relieved. While Muslims shun pigs as ritually unclean, many Copts also fear them as disease-carriers, with panic over swine flu heightened as Egypt has suffered at least 26 deaths from avian flu since 2006, the most in any country outside Asia. Besides, the crowded pig pens, surrounded by mounds of self-combusting biodegradable slime and hemmed in by dense human settlement, are a stinky eyesore. But the question no one seems to ask is, if pigs are no longer there to munch away at them, where will Cairo’s giant piles of leftovers go?

然而余下的8000万埃及人中大多人觉得比较放心。穆斯林信徒们都回避猪，他们认为猪是不干净的，许多科普特人也害怕猪会传染疾病，自2006年以来在埃及由禽流感致死的人至少有26人，为亚洲之外的国家中死亡人数最多的国家，这也加重了人们对猪流感的恐慌。此外，拥挤的猪圈中，充斥着成堆的可生物降解的猪粪，它们周围是人口密集的居民区，即散发恶臭，也影响市容。但还有一个似乎每人提的问题是，假如那些猪不再那儿咀嚼剩余的垃圾，那么开罗成堆的剩余垃圾何去何从呢？


reference to http://www.economist.com/world/mideast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13611723