World health oganization

Though the New York Times also covers the international health view in reporting that the World Health Organization has gone on record stating that the slaughtering of the nation’s pigs has “no scientific basis” and that the United Nations describes the government executed slaughter as being a “real mistake”. The periodical touches lightly on the issues and views of international health organizations but focuses more on the lack of compensation received and the plight of the poverty stricken pig farmers.

They report that when talk of a cull first began it was said that the Egyptian Health ministry promised that the farmers would indeed be compensated for the confiscation of their livestock, but upon experiencing some varied measure of resistance or implied disagreement from Parliament it is as yet unclear whether or not the pig farmers will ever see that compensation heterogeneous shopping product.

The New York Times also presents the firsthand account of the pig farmers by interviewing a 26 year old Manshiet Nasser farmer, by name of Barsoum Girgis, who makes his living as a pig farmer and garbage collector. Girgis has gone on record stating that the Egyptian government is wrongfully going after the livelihood of the farmers. It is his, and other farmers’ belief that the pigs are perfectly healthy and he is left wondering how he will ever afford to feed his family and send his children to school without the availability and resource that he once had in his livestock.

The newspaper shines a spotlight on how the farmers live, residing in an area where trash collecting is dependent upon people like Barsoum Girgis, who, when he had his livestock, would awaken every morning before dawn to comb the streets of Cairo for goods that he could sell to scrap yards for money and food scraps that he could use as pig feed. They also shine a light on the divisions between the Egyptian classes and the way that poor people are viewed within the nation.

They have quoted Egypt’s Agriculture Ministry’s Head of Infectious Disease Saber Abdel Aziz-Galal’s as saying that it is his thought that the confiscated pigs should be taken to be raised on “good farms, not on rubbish”. Unlike any of the other newspapers, The New York Times takes the slaughtering of hundreds of thousands of livestock, that was supposed to be an effort to safeguard against the infestation of swine flu, and turns it into a personal attack against the farmers who are raising the livestock.

This has become one of those clear cases in which the lowest of classes is targeted and further oppressed. Barsoum Girgis’ feelings echo this sentiment in his statement, “we are Christian, and we are the underclass, so it's very easy to go after us”. It’s amazing how the New York Times article so eloquently portrayed the Egyptian government as classist and egregious.