Pork!

[randomness]

In response to the ridiculous bans on pork imports from parts of North America by at least ten different countries, I propose that those of us who normally eat pork incorporate it into one more meal than usual. I started this morning with bacon. Mmmm, bacon.

I suspect these pork bans are more about raising a trade barrier than anything else.

Who's with me? For tasty pork, and against panic and protectionism!

Edit: added the word "imports" and reworded first sentence for clarity.

Comments

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

While some of it is protectionism, some of it is a different form of bad public policy. Egypt's internal pig cull will hurt their economy, not even help it in a "beggar thy neighbor" kind of way. That said, apparently most of the pig farming population in Egypt is Coptic (i.e. Christian), so this may be an aspect of crisis hits, so let's oppress the local religious minority! But my guess is that part of this is the "we need to be seen as doing something, even if the something is unproductive or bad."

Out of curiosity, have pork prices started falling yet in response to all this? That seems like a likely result, and provides an opportunity for the well-informed to get cheap and yummy pork products, but I haven't checked out the pricing.

[julianyap.livejournal.com]

Well, you know what they say, never let a crisis go to waste.

I note that Sibelius soared through after weeks of slow going.

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

So, as I've heard more about the pig cull, I can see the reasons behind it, even if I think the Egyptian government is going about it the wrong way. It sounds as if most of the pig herds in Egypt live not just within city limits, but in apartment courtyards. Talk about close contact with people! Given this, fears that the flu could spread between live pigs and people and then on to other people do not seem completely baseless.

Also according to the NPR report this morning, the Egyptian government has been dealing with the Bird flu for a while by trying to address by improving the hygiene of people handling birds. So a concern for how people are interacting with animals has been demonstrated previously. It also sounds like there have been calls to move the pigs outside city limits for a while.

All that said, killing every pig in Egypt does sound like a stupid thing to do (currently, the herd is healthy, they'll have to import more pigs who may be infected if they want to rebuild the industry!). I can also see how the fact that the industry is controlled by a religious minority enables this sort of across the board silliness.

I do support the "Eat Pork" campaign proposed above, and went out and bought a tenderloin last night. mmm, pork!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, have pork prices started falling yet in response to all this?

As a matter of fact, yes:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKTRE53T5A520090430

"At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where cattle and hog prices are set daily, hog prices tumbled this week. The actively traded June hog futures was down 3 percent Thursday morning at 64.700 cents per lb, and down nearly 10 percent since Friday."