"extermination of Haiti's pigs"   8:16 PM 16 Jan 2009

I wonder how many credulous Mudcatters will swallow this link as "the answer" on this question.

As usual there is another side.

First start with the author of the linked article:   Mr. Aristide.   A totally objective source, of course.   Or maybe not.

Second:   African swine fever in Haiti was a fact.   Haiti's government itself "destroyed all swine with 15 kilometers of both sides of the border. No compensation was paid to any Haitian farmer for his lost pigs in this early phase." ...." " By December 1978 30,000 swine had died in the initial outbreaks of the disease in Haiti.   Reports were that the people were terrified. Pigs were found floating in rivers. The deaths were rapid, nothing like people had seen before." (Philip Gaertner).   

"The history of development programs in Haiti had always been one of corruption and failure, not success.....This was a project that no one wanted to undertake."

"The first two shipments (of replacement pigs) arrived from the Canadian lowest bidder in very poor condition, possessing disease and deformities. After that...only US hogs were purchased."


There's a lot more.   Don't know how much interest there is in this topic.   But it's remarkably easy for Mudcatters, it seems, to find US big business is the culprit, no matter what the problem.

A bit more research--and it's not hard--would show somebody not just interested in ideological propaganda that the answers are often complex.