Indian street pigs are mostly not feral

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:

 

 

Indian street pigs are mostly not feral

 

DELHI, MYSORE, BANGALORE--India easily leads the world in

numbers of street pigs, but relatively few are completely feral.

Much of the Indian domestic pig population roams the streets to

forage, loosely attended by herders who may be blocks away.

Relatively few pigs are raised in confinement, in a nation whose

upper caste Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Muslims have

traditionally shunned pork.

Historically, only what are now called the " scheduled "

castes, " tribals, " and the Christian minority ate pork. For

millennia, pig-herding was accordingly a minor and not very

profitable branch of animal husbandry. This has recently abruptly

changed. A high birth rate among " scheduled " castes, increasing

affluence among " scheduled " caste members who have pursued subsidized

education, enabling them to buy more meat, and weakening caste

barriers throughout Indian society have enabled pig herders to

rapidly expand their markets.

" Breeding pigs is big business, " The Hindu newspaper

recently explained. " Assuming that per capita consumption of pork is

one half kilogram (about one pound) per week, and that less than 5%

of the population eat pork, a city the size of Mysore would consume

26,000 pigs per year. "

Just one confinement barn may hold that many pigs in the

U.S., China, and other pork-eating nations. The pigs' effluent

might be noticed, but the pigs themselves are not. Usually the

barns are far from any city.

Few as pigs are in India, relatively speaking, they are

increasingly visible, especially in cities where Animal Birth

Control programs encouraged by national law and subsidized by the

Animal Welfare Board of India have reduced street dog populations,

making more refuse available to pigs.

Street dogs have long been feared by many Indians because of

the risk of rabies. Dogs are still the chief vectors for rabies in

India, which still has more reported human and animal cases than the

rest of the world combined--but pigs can also carry rabies, they

deliver a stronger bite, and though street dogs continue to far

outnumber street pigs, suspicion is growing that the pigs may be far

more dangerous.

Delhi, the Indian capital, is among the cities where ABC

programs have been underway the longest. Delhi also is among the

cities where street-dwelling pig production has most conspicuously

expanded. There is as yet no Indian national policy on street pigs,

but that could change soon as result of two attacks on children

within three days in the northwest Delhi suburb of Samaipur Badly.

On November 28, 2006, three-year-old Ajay Yadeav wandered

outdoors with his lunch, and within minutes was killed and partially

eaten by pigs. The pigs' owner, a man named Jachche, was

reportedly held for causing death due to negligence, but the pigs

remained at large.

On November 30, 2006, a pig bit the head and shoulder of a

six-year-old, who survived.

The Hindu has been reporting similar incidents in growing

numbers, from all parts of India. For example, Pedapati Manikyam,

65, of Pedaboddepalli village, about 100 kilometres north of

Visakhapatnam, was asleep in her home on October 27, 2005, The

Hindu recounted, when two pigs belonging to local herders approached

her, and bit her right hand off when she tried to slap them away.

" The woman died due to profuse loss of blood, " The Hindu said.

 

Disease threat

 

But overt attacks, horrifying as they are, are much less a

threat to humans than diseases transmitted by pig parasites, insects

who breed in pig wallows, and influenza viruses for whom pigs are an

intermediary between wild waterfowl and humans.

The influenza epidemic of 1918, which killed more people in

India than anywhere else, was only the deadliest of many outbreaks

which are believed to have mutated among pigs before hitting humans.

Typically a flu strain does not become epidemic among humans

until it develops the ability to spread from human to human. A flu

strain evolving to spread from pig to pig, and then from pig to

human, is the typical precursor of a serious outbreak.

Accordingly, while the avian flu H5N1 has killed more than

150 people since 1996 who had close contact with infected poultry,

most of whom have been stricken since 2003, epidemiologists have

been most concerned about the risk of crossover to pigs, which might

occur most readily in India. Large populations of both free-roaming

pigs and humans living almost together, with poor sanitation and

inadequate health care, together form the nexus that could turn H5N1

from a scourge of poultry and occasional threat to humans into a

possible repetition of 1918, whose spread might be expedited by jet

travel.

A more immediate threat is Japanese encephalitis, carried by

mosquitoes who reproduce in liquefied pig excrement.

" Mosquitoes are held responsible for an outbreak of Japanese

encephalitis that has claimed the lives of more than 480 children in

Uttar Pradesh, " reported South China Morning Post Delhi

correspondent Amrit Dhillon in September 2005, " but pigs must share

the blame. Half a kilometre from the BRD Medical College in

Gorakhpur, where most of the victims died, low-caste Hindu families

rear pigs and live in unimaginably filthy conditions.

" The pigs are never given food or drink by their impoverished

owners, " Dhillon wrote. " Instead, the animals root among rotten

vegetable peels, mutton bones and decaying fruit on rubbish dumps,

and snort through open gutters in search of food. The pigs can be

sold for around $110 U.S., so they are both an important source of

income, and a source of the killer disease. Japanese encephalitis

has struck northern India every year since 1978, " Dhillion said.

Federal health minister Anbumani Ramdoss ordered the Uttar

Pradesh government state to move pigs out of residential areas and

away from hospitals, but the order had small chance of being

enforced.

The death toll eventually rose to more than 1,000, including

about 800 in India and 200-plus in neighboring Nepal.

Uttar Pradesh director general of health O.P. Singh told

Marjorie Mason of Associated Press that vaccinating the seven million

children at risk of contracting Japanese encephalitis would cost

about $58 million. The state's entire health budget for the year was

just $25 million.

 

Sanitation

 

The conditions producing the Uttar Pradesh outbreak appeared

to be more typical for India than exceptional.

At Ramanathapuram, Tamil Nadu, " inside the government

hospital has become an important habitat for pigs, " The Hindu

reported in March 2006. " At least 50 to 75 pigs can be seen inside

and outside the hospital, " The Hindu asserted. " Similarly, open

places at the Tamil Nadu Housing Board Colony are attracting pigs,

because drain water flowing in the colony has created six ponds in

the complex. According to a rough estimate, " the anonymous Hindu

reporter assessed, " the current pig population is around 1,500 to

2,000. "

The Ramanathapuram Municipal Council authorized shooting the

pigs, but there was no immediate follow-up.

In Ongole, The Hindu reported in May 2006, " 70-80 persons

belonging to scheduled castes and tribes are rearing about 10,000

pigs. The trade has become so lucrative, " The Hindu alleged, " that

other castes have taken up the profession. "

After the Andhra Pradesh High Court in March 2006 ordered

Ongole to control street pigs within six months, city officials two

months later " engaged the services of 20 persons belonging to the

Nakkala community in Nellore, who have expertise to kill stray pigs

and dogs, " The Hindu said. " Carrying country-made (homemade) guns,

they went around the town killing pigs. "

No other mention of dogs was made.

" The pig rearers, who have been violating High Court orders to

confine the animals, came around and sought the mercy of the health

officials, " promising to sell the surviving pigs in Bangalore " in

the next couple of days, " The Hindu continued.

The story was similar in Shimoga, Karnataka. Shimoga city

employees began sporadic pig purges in mid-February 2005.

Predictably failing to clear the streets of pigs for long, the

Shimoga poisoning in July 2006 ran into political trouble when seven

cows were poisoned along with 450 pigs.

Meanwhile, in Hiriyur, east of Shimoga and north of

Bangalore, city officials announced a campaign against pigs, but

suspended it after the pig herders complained to a justice of the

Karnataka Lokayukta, or anti-corruption agency.

" The swine menace had reached unbearable proportions, " fumed

the Deccan Herald. " Tiny tots carrying lunch boxes to school and

housewives returning from shopping with bags of groceries were the

main targets of the pigs. There have been instances where these

animals have bitten children after chasing them for some distance. "

 

Poisoning

 

The Davangere municipal council in February 2005 poisoned

more than 2,000 street pigs, after three schoolchildren were bitten

by pigs in a single day.

The council, after poisoning 1,000 pigs in late 2004, " had

given a month's deadline for the owners of the animals to take the

pigs outside the city. The deadline expired 14 days ago, " The Hindu

said.

By March 2005, Davangere had poisoned 5,000 pigs, and had

become the model for poisoning campaigns planned in Mysore,

Hubli-Dharwad, and Raichur.

" They used zinc phosphate mixed with flour, and making it

into rolls, placed it all over the city, " Mysore administrative

task force member H.R. Bapu Satyanarayana told The Hindu. " In four

days they found 5,000 pigs lying dead. "

Other Mysore officials were much less enthusiastic. After

more than a year of repeatedly warning pig herders that free-roaming

pigs might be poisoned or shot on sight, city workers in June 2005

trucked about 25 pigs to the municipal sewage treatment plant. The

Mysore pig population meanwhile rose from about 18,000 in April 2005

to about 20,000 going into 2006.

" Nearly 200 families depend on pig rearing in the city, "

reported the Deccan Herald. " The pig owners are refusing to move

their pigs beyond the city limits, demanding basic amenities in

compensation. "

Confrontations over pigs commenced in Hubli-Dharwad in 2004,

when then-mayor Anilkumar Patil ordered the police to shoot

free-roaming pigs. The pig herders rallied against the shooting,

then removed their herds, temporarily. In 2006, after discussion

of shooting or poisoning pigs subsided, the pigs returned in force.

In September 2006, Hubli-Dharward health officer A.C. Swamy

" warned that criminal cases would be registered against those engaged

in rearing pigs who fail to prevent the animals from straying on

roads, " The Hindu reported. " He said all pigs straying on roads

would either be shot dead or poisoned. "

 

Policy

 

Indian national policy since Decem-ber 1997 has been to avoid

killing street dogs, but street pigs tend to be killed by any means

available, with little or no recognition that pigs who survive and

escape will then breed back up to the carrying capacity of the

habitat.

But in at least one community, officials have reportedly

interpreted the national dog policy as pertaining to pigs as well.

" Hundreds of families who live on the river banks " now rear

pigs near the Budhan Sandhai marketplace, in Pallipalayam, on the

River Cauvery, reported The Hindu in August 2006. " Absence of

toilets has forced the residents to depend on the river banks. This

is an ideal situation for the pigs to grow, " The Hindu explained.

" Municipal officials say they have warned the residents many times

not to rear pigs, " The Hindu continued. " On many occasions they

have also captured the pigs. However, they released them a few days

later. Officials say they are not able to kill the pigs. They cite

a law that prevents killing animals, and they don't have the

facilities to sterilize the captured pigs. "

An October 2006 update downsized the human population in the

primary pig habitat to 80 families, most of whom are not pig

herders. Along with others in the vicinity, The Hindu said, " they

want the civic body to construct public convenience facilities,

want bathrooms, want the municipality to clear garbage on a regular

basis and go in for solid waste management, and want the civic body

to deal with the pig menace. "

Recognizing that the street pig problem results ultimately

from deficient refuse disposal, Hyderabad municipal commissioner

Sanjay Jagu in October 2006 coupled an order to staff to remove pigs

from the streets with orders to " clear debris on a priority basis, "

and " construct public toilets to maintain hygiene, " The Hindu

reported.

" The health wing was asked to carry out door-to-door

collection of garbage by arranging tricycles, and to bring

commercial establishments under a bulk garbage removal system, " The

Hindu continued. " Jaju also requested residents to cooperate by not

dumping garbage on the roads. "

--Merritt Clifton

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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