Cairo swine flu prevention, a load of rubbish

Back in April when swine flu triggered its first wave of panic, authorities in Egypt acted quickly by wiping out the beasts that gave the virus its name. President Hosni Mubarak's Agriculture Ministry ordered all pigs in Cairo killed. 

(Photo borrowed from New York Times -- thanks. People rounding up pigs in the cull.)

Rights groups raised concerns that minority Christians in the predominantly Muslim nation were being targeted in a discriminatory measure that attacked a livelihood Islam wrote-off as unclean. The pig owners, mostly from the Zabaleen minority, warned that the pig cull would have terrible consequences, and it now seems that they were exactly right.

Cairo is sinking under a rising mound of rotting garbage that the Zabaleen used to willingly collect, but since the slaughter of 300,000 pigs now have no reason to do so. "The problem is clear in the streets," spokesman for the Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs, Haitham Kamal was quoted as saying in the New York Times.

"The whole area is trash,"Ramadan Hediya, a supermarket delivery man in a low-income area of Cairo told the Times. "All the pathways are full of trash. When you open up your window to breathe, you find garbage heaps on the ground."

In what appears to be a staggering oversight, the Egyptian government apparently ignored the role of the Zabaleen Christians in Cairo as the defacto garbage collectors of the city when they ordered the pig cull.  For more than half a century, the community, mostly based on the eastern cliffs at the edge of the city, provided a service by collecting rubbish from people's doorsteps to sell recyclables, and to harvest organic waste for pig-feed.

Killing the pigs "was the stupidest thing they (the government) ever did," Laila Iskandar Kamel chairwoman of a Cairo community develpment group told the New York Times. 

"They killed the pigs, let them clean the city," former Zabaleen garbage collector Moussa Rateb told the Times. 

Egypt has so far recorded some 800 cases of H1N1, included two deaths, but all of these appeared after the pig cull. The Times reported that in a system that has been in place since the late 1940s the Zabaleen associations were collecting around 6,000 tons of trash a day by the time of the slaughter, and 60 percent of that was food-waste given to their pigs. 

Around 70,000 families lost their livelihood in the killings, according to Bloomberg, in an action that was labelled a mistake by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, who said there was no link between pigs and the transmission of the new flu-outbreak.

"No one took into consideration the economics, much less the environmental problems, " of the cull, Magdi Foud, whose pork industry business was wiped out, told Bloomberg.

Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza justified the slaughter, citing the fear of H5N1 bird-flu mixing with swine flu and also said, "we had been planning to get rid of the pigs for three years. The swine-flu fears gave us the opportunity," Bloomberg reported.

Meanwhile, Marzouka Beshir pointed to a pile of rotting garbage in a working class neighbourhood in Cairo and told AFP, "Look, that's where the swine flu is going to come from."

Belgians accuse Chinese gangs of pigeon theft

Pigeon breeders have accused Chinese gangs of killing and mutilating prize birds in Belgium, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday.

64 birds have gone missing from the lofts of top fanciers in Belgium over the past few days.

The connection with China was made after witnesses concerned about fly-tipping photographed two "Asian-looking" men dumping bags of rubbish in an Antwerp woodland beauty spot last weekend.

Investigators then found that the sacks contained fourteen dead pigeons, each with a leg cut off and identity tags removed, according to the Telegraph.

A local breeder reported the theft of 14 birds the same day.

(Pigeon photo courtesy of ecosafewildlife.com)

Two Chinese nationals questioned by Belgian police on Saturday said that they were there on business "in the world of pigeon fanciers."
The men were allowed to leave after they presented legitimate proof of purchase of Belgian pigeons.

But the Royal Belgian Federation of Pigeon Fanciers are adamant that Chinese gangs are orchestrating bird theft, saying there have been ten cases of stolen top-birds so far this year.

Rather than take champion birds alive, the thieves are killing them for their ID tags which are much easier to smuggle.

"All they have to do is fit the stolen identification rings in China onto a bird a fraction of the value, which they then pass off as an ace racer," federation president Pierre De Rijst was quoted as saying.

"It really is an epidemic, a true plague," he said.

A pigeon that has won a national or international competition can be worth more than 14,000 dollars US, and birds in Belgium are renowned worldwide.

Last week in Britain a breeder had 43 of his top birds stolen from his allotment site, the Hartlepool Mail reported. The loss was worth up to 4,000 dollars US.

In a separate incident in Northern Ireland last month 100 pigeons were killed in a fire strongly suspected to be the work of arsonists, The Racing Pigeon Weekly reported.

Breeders saved some pigeons by opening up lofts to allow the birds to escape, but some found alive were so badly burned they had to be put down.

Daring food robbers target lions

Humans are stealing meat from lions, and the practice may be common and widespread in Africa, scientists reported in a study published last month.

(Photo and graphic courtesy of National Geographic)

A team of researchers in Cameroon discovered a lion-kill in the wild that was later butchered with knives and stripped of flesh, which prompted them to survey field reports on human kleptoparasitism, or food theft.

In the incident that triggered the suvey, observers first watched a pair of big cats gorging on the carcass of a native antelope in the Benoue national park, according to the study published in the African Journal of Ecology.

(yellow patch shows lion range)

The lions fled when the scientists approached in their vehicles to make an initial inspection of the scene. When the observers returned several hours later, instead of lions, people scattered from the scene and disappeared into the surrounding bushland.

The researchers found that the carcass had ben stripped, with cut marks making clear that knives were used.

"The only remains left were the head, the feet and a few remains from the skin," the report says, leaving the authors to speculate that the lions may have been chased off the meat by local villagers.

"Freshly cut leaves were found at the remains, suggesting they wrapped the meat in leaves for transport," it says.

Occurrences of kleptoparasitism amongst animals are well documented, including lions and hyaenas commonly filtching from each other, as well as both species stealing from cheatahs and African wild dogs.

However there is little on record about incidents of humans scavenging off top predators. But one Ugandan study in 1999 uncovered nine cases of human kleptoparasitism, from which the authors of the latest paper conclude that the phenomenon may be common in Africa.

They also cite anecdotal reports that suggest the practice may be wide-spread among several groups of people, from the nomadic Mbororo in North Cameroon to park staff on the Maswa game reserve in Tanzania.

Illegal diamond miners in the remote northern regions of the Central African Republic were reportedly scavenging from big cats, and elsewhere in the same country there is a village known to allow lions to live nearby, specifically for easy access to their prey.

While the literature on modern incidents is thin, studies of prehistoric human kleptoparasitism are more common, suggesting that our ancestors were frequent opportunistic robbers of carnivores, for vital additional protein.

The authors say that the subject merits more attention and that important lessons in conservation may be gained from it.

"It may be that humans receive benefits from their co-existence with lions and other large carnivores, possibly influencing their attitude and behaviour," it says.

More of cocaine king’s hippos will not be executed, beer company saves the day

Two hippos that once belonged to Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar have been saved from the firing squad, after a public outcry following the killing of another.

(photo: AFP/Getty images)

The first hippo, Pepe, was killed by government forces last month, meeting a fate similar to original owner Escobar, who was gunned down trying to escape arrest on a Medellin rooftop in 1993.

Pressure from animal rights campaigners and mounting public outrage has caused the environment ministry to accept a beer company’s proposal to send in African wildlife experts to help find an alternative solution for the two other hippos that remain in the wild near Escobar’s former estate.

Escobar, who Forbes magazine estimated in 1989 to be the seventh richest person in the world, had created a private zoo on his northern Colombian hacienda in Antioquia province during the height of his reign as the world’s most powerful cocaine dealer.

The zoo included elephants, kangaroos, alligators and rhinos, in addition to the four hippos that were introduced in 1981, according to the L.A. Times. The hippos thrived in the South American environment and began breeding.

When Escobar’s sprawling hacienda fell into government hands after his death, the estate, including a private “Jurassic park” stocked with dinosaur replicas, fell into disrepair. Most of the exotic animals were taken by zoos, but some hippos were left behind.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UHFHT1WhPc )

“Since this place was left alone and no one was taking care of it the electric fence stopped working. So [the hippos] started to break through the wire fences, because the barbed wire doesn’t stop them,” a ranger who managed the estate for a Colombian environmental agency told National Geographic.

Pepe and his mate, Matilda, were forced out off the ranch, and out of a herd that had grown to around 25 animals by 2007, following a confrontation with the group’s dominant male, according to Colombia Reports.

After that the pair started roaming the Magdaleno Medio river where they successfully bred in the wild. But nervous locals reported crop damage, flattened fences and the killing of livestock.

“There could be human losses, and I’m sure there will be, because they will take over the river as their territory,” veterinarian Maria Cecilia Campo told National geographic in a 2008 documentary.

The local authority had offered the hippos for free to anyone who was willing to capture and take them, but no institution or individual stepped up, according to the L.A. Times.

Finally an exection order for the “narco-hippos” was signed by the environment ministry, and Pepe was shot through the heart with a .374 caliber bullet on June 18th.

A public outcry was triggered nearly a month later, after a photograph emerged showing 15 beaming soldiers posing with their 2 tonne trophy-carcass.

“Pepe is a symbol of what’s going on in this country,” protester Santiago Rodriguez was quoted on Colombia Reports website. “We want to show people and the government that bullets are not the only way to solve a problem.”

“People think moving a hippopotamus from one place to another is like lassoing a cow…Colombia doesn’t have sufficient know-how to manage it,” Environment vice minister Claudia Mora told El Tiempo newspaper, in defence of the killing.

Even as protests mounted over the past week, the death warrant on the two remaining hippos at large stayed in place. Until Wednesday that is, when the government bowed to public pressure, and accepted an offer by a Bogata based brewery.

Beer company Bavaria, owned by SABMiller, offered to pay experts from South Africa and Tanzania to travel to Antioquia and help capture the beasts, Reuters reported.

“We have accepted Bavaria’s offer. The hunt is off,” environment ministry spokeswoman told Reuters. “The idea is to relocate the animals.”

It’s Knut fair: German zoo suing for polar bear profits

A custody battle is raging over Germany’s celebrity polar bear Knut, between the zoo that legally owns him and the zoo that has hand-reared him from birth.

(Picture of Knut by Reuters via Der Seigel)

Berlin Zoo may have reaped an estimated 10 million euros, according to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, in increased visitor attendance and merchandising, since the cub hit the headlines in 2007 as an orphan that was rescued by keepers.

Now the legal owners, Neumunster zoo, are demanding a share of the profits, or else they want Knut back.

The zoo first wants to know exactly how much the crowd-pulling bear has made for the Berlin Zoo, a spokeswoman for the Berlin regional court told AFP. “The second stage could be a demand for payment,” she said.

German broadcaster Deutsche Welle has reported that Neumunster has asked for 700,000 euros for an outright purchase, but Berlin has countered with half the amount, the standard price for a polar bear according to the court spokeswoman.

Knut was born in Berlin zoo after his father was loaned out by Neumunster in a breeding deal that gave the latter ownership to the first born cub.

Ironically, Knut, and the Berlin zoo’s, success began after the cub was rejected by his mother and his life was endangered. Zoo staff intervened in a controversial move that angered conservationists who said he should be left to die. He had a twin brother who was also rejected and didn’t survive.

“If truth be told, the zoo should have killed the baby bear,” one campaigner was quoted by the BBC as saying.

But photogenic Knut quickly became an animal celebrity, attracting thousands of fans and lucrative deals including documentaries and fashion shoots. He has inspired an array of merchandising including cuddly toys, jigsaws, mobile phone ring tones, windscreen cleaners and books.

His early development has been avidly followed in the media including high-brow publications such as Der Spiegel, who reported in 2007 that his equally famous keeper, Thomas Dorflein, was having problems adjusting after he had been ordered to cut down on contact with the growing cub.

44-year-old Dorflein, who nursed the polar bear cub in his most helpless days, died of a heart-attack last September.

Last year the magazine reported that Knut was pining for human companionship during an enforced period of weaning-off people. “He has become so used to the attention of people that he cries when no one is standing in front of his enclosure watching him,” Der Spiegel reported.

Knut has also been seen mimicking tourists taking photos, according to AFP.

Last month a woman jumped into the polar bear enclosure to try to make contact with Knut, the Guardian reported. She was seriously injured after another bear attacked her.

Now the Berlin court has ordered the feuding zoos to settle their dispute by June 13, if they want to avoid legal intervention.

Berlin zoo director Bernhard Blaskiewitz had hoped to settle the matter with Neumunster a lot earlier, “give them a few penguins and let that be an end to it,” he said.

Care for some pandemic with your cut-price pork?

Swine flu has infected more than 9,800 people and killed 79 since it raised its snout on the global stage at the beginning of May, according to the World Heath Organization.

As soon as word spread like a virus in the global media, the meat industry piped up, saying that, as the problem was primarily in the human population, the name was misleading.

The WHO concurred soon after, announcing that we should all call the bug by the unpromising name of influenza A(H1N1) virus.

But for many scientists there are good reasons to keep the name swine flu.

Writing in the New Scientist, Debora MacKenzie explains, “This type of virus emerged in the US in 1998 and has since become endemic on hog farms across North America.”

Until then a normally mild form of swine flu existed in pigs, which didn’t show much sign of evolving. But in 1998 the virus “swine H1N1” mixed with human and bird strains, resulting in “triple reassortants,” first detected in Minnesota, Iowa and Texas.

It was a potent mix, with pig virus proteins making it a fast evolver, and the avian portion giving it quick replicating powers and therefore added virulence.

It is now entrenched in the North American pig population and there is evidence that thousands of farm workers have been infected with mild forms. “One in five US pig workers has been found to have antibodies to swine flu, showing they have been infected,” writes MacKenzie.

The current strain of A(H1N1) was first detected in humans in Mexico this year. Reports surfaced in early April that residents of a town called La Gloria, east of Mexico city, were hit by a surge in respiratory disease. After Easter week, when millions of Mexicans travel, new reports of the disease emerged across the country.

Residents of La Gloria blamed pig farms in nearby Perote owned by Granjas Carrol, a subsidiary of US hot giant Smithfield Foods, Mackenzie wrote.

Smithfield Foods denied any wrongdoing, citing its vaccination programme and monthly tests for influenza. But according to Mackenzie, “all the evidence suggests that swine flu was a disaster waiting to happen.”

The problem is that the virus has been evolving rapidly in a microscopic arms-race against the hog immune system.

When pig mortality started affecting profits after 1998, the meat industry went into vaccinating overdrive. But inoculation hasn’t stemmed the flow of new flu strains, writes Peter Aldhous in a separate New Scientist article.

The virus has been mutating and evolving faster than the pharmaceutical industry, or at least the US Department of Agriculture, has been able to keep up.

“We only chased this virus with vaccine rather than confront it,” said Rodney Baker who was formerly a vet for major US pork producer Premium Standard Farms.

While small drug companies would compound batches of vaccine for specific strains affecting a particular herd of pigs, it takes months or years for those vaccines to get USDA approval for the mass market. By then the dominant virus strain would have already evolved to beat the vaccine.

“Under some circumstances, the vaccines may even have made the disease worse,” Aldhous writes.

In one test on the effectiveness of the vaccines Baker inoculated 20,000 pigs with a mass-produced vaccine and left another 20,000 untouched. Twice as many pigs died in the vaccinated group than in the control. In theory a vaccine can make a virus more potent if there is a slight difference between the vaccine strain and a new mutation.

But stopping the vaccinations is not an option because the viruses now circulating in North American pigs would, if left unchecked, keep spreading further.

New Scientist is careful to point out that pig vaccination programs cannot be blamed for the evolution of flu strains. Pig reassortants are notoriously promiscuous, Aldhous explains, readily swapping surface proteins to slip past immune systems. “Even if no vaccines had been used, natural pig immunity would probably have been enough to drive the emergence of new variants,” he writes.

More effective, genetically modified vaccines that stop virus strains from mutating may become available in the future. But research is expensive and the pork industry is under pressure from rising feed prices and low supermarket prices.

So, given the choice between bargain pork chops and lowering the risk of a global flu pandemic, what would you do?

(Photo of pig farm from magnusgas.com)

Cobra dazzles Hong Kong beach goers

A popular Hong Kong beach was visited by a two-metre king cobra last weekend, although most people who saw it had no idea that they were looking at one of the most lethal snakes in the world.

(Pictures by Martin Megino)

A large crowd of day trippers were spread across one of the territory’s longest and best beaches on Lantau island, when some people saw the reptile swim out of the water.

Concerned bathers on Pui O beach called the police, who soon arrived and cordoned off an area to give the snake a wide birth, although it was mistakenly identified as a python at the time.

When I arrived to take photographs, a policeman warned me against crossing the cordon, saying that I would scare it back into the sea. We assumed that they were waiting for an officer from the Agriculture Fisheries and Conservation Department to catch the snake, in line with its conservation policy of relocating pythons to designated sites.

Dozens of beach-goers, including mesmerised children and their awestruck parents, looked on at the enormous beast, which seemed alert, but mostly untroubled in its chosen resting spot on the grey sand.

According to an AFCD field-guide on poisonous snakes, the king cobra is “regarded by some experts as the most dangerous snake in the world.”

But when snake catchers hadn’t arrived by dark, the police threw sand at cobra to drive it back into the sea, as day trippers packed up, and campers at the back of the beach started preparing their evening meals.

Two days later we got a positive identification from a recommended snake expert.
“It’s a king cobra,” Michael Lau of local conservation NGO, Kadoorie farm, told us after looking at my colleague, Martin Megino’s excellent close-ups.

“The hood will only appear when it is threatened or about to strike,” he told us, noting that it had an unusual colour pattern, unlike any of the local cobras he had seen.

Although king cobras are endemic in Hong Kong, they are not common, and Lau said that the beach was an unusual place for it to be. He said one explanation could be that it was a “market snake” that had escaped a boat.

Nearly 6,000 snakes were legally imported into Hong Kong last year, according to a spokesperson from the AFCD, though this number is much lower than the 17,000 odd of the previous year and the 32,000 of 2006.

Lau said that king cobras would cost “thousands of dollars” on the local market, which wouldn’t be surprising considering their iconic status as well as the endangered listing within the territory.

Their import numbers are very low compared to the overall snake trade. Only thirteen were legally imported to Hong Kong in the years 2006 and 2007, all of them from Malaysia. None were registered last year.

That would make our mystery visitor on the Pui O beach a very rare and valuable commodity.