Modern Epic Tales: Unintended Consequence

Kill 300,000 pigs in Egypt used to help eat garbage and kept in "herds" generally fewer than ten pigs to "control" swine flu and what do you get? The good possibility of some other disease breaking out because of piling up garbage and an ensuing growth in rodent and fly populations.

Swine flu developed within industrially grown herds of thousands of pigs in unsanitary conditions, which is a formula for creating the chance of a disease breakout.

The unintended consequence of the use of pigs kept in small numbers by families who collected and recycled garbage for income? A safer Cairo?

Why'd they really do it? They have had 30+ deaths from avian flu arising from "farming" too many chickens in unsanitary conditions for the world poultry market. Had to look good at something but not threaten the income of poultry traders. Add to this that the garbage pickers are minority Coptic Christians and the government probably thought no one would care.

But now the garbage is piling up

clipped from www.bloomberg.com Swine-Flu Slaughter Leaves Cairo Without Pigs to Devour Trash Five months after anxiety about swine flu prompted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government to order the slaughter of all the country’s 300,000 hogs, the organic waste they once devoured is piling up on Cairo’s streets, contributing to a garbage crisis.