Eliminating the Haitian Swine

By Natalie Angler

The death of island pigs could kill the peasant's way of life

For Haitian peasants, the native black swine, the so-called cochon planche, has long been a combination bank account, mobile garbage-disposal unit and occasional religious prop. Haitian farmers, among the world's poorest, have relied on the pigs to produce income for medical care, weddings, funerals and education. The long-legged, lean porker was also a helpful consumer of weeds and even human wastes. And of no small importance, hougans (priests) regularly appease their demanding Petro gods with the blood of a black pig, the preferred sacrificial symbol of voodoo.

But those Haitian pigs have virtually disappeared, and with them may go the peasant's way of life. Three years ago, when African swine fever broke out among local hogs, the Haitian government, with U.S. assistance, undertook a $22 million one-year campaign that eradicated the country's surviving population of 400,000 black swine. Reason: U.S. agricultural experts feared that the disease would spread and wreck the $10 billion U.S. pig business. Death squads wiped out the pigs of 800,000 Haitian families, paying $30 to $40 compensation for each animal killed. Wildlife biologists are now tracking down 40 or so feral pigs still at large.

Last year 2,000 sentinel pigs were sent from the U.S. and Canada to 505 locations in Haiti to test for the presence of any remaining African swine fever. Less than 1% of them have died.

That favorable result led to the first shipment four months ago of 500 prime Iowa breeding pigs, among them Hampshires and white Yorkshires, to pens outside the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Although they are now thriving in their roofed stys, nobody knows if these pampered replacement hogs will prosper or even survive the harsh life of their new homeland. The imported pigs were eating such food as wheat shorts and soya supplemented by vitamins and minerals, and drinking water from taps--all luxuries unknown to most Haitians, much less the old black hogs. Once the island is declared free of disease, the Haitian government, aided by a $27 million Inter-American Development Bank loan, will restock the island pig population, establishing breeding and slaughtering facilities. The fear, however, is that this ambitious commercial plan will bypass the peasant.

The traditional Haitian black swine, raised on the island of Hispaniola since the 15th century, was a singularly hardy species; it was a cross between Spanish hogs brought over after the voyages of Christopher Columbus and indigenous wild boars. The 70-lb. pig could run swiftly and forage for itself. Indeed, so voracious was its appetite for waste that Haitians did not need outhouses: their pigs kept the neighborhood clean and disease-free. The hogs also rooted in the soil in search of tubers and root-destroying worms, thereby helping turn the earth for planting, ridding crops of insect pests and leaving behind nitrogen-rich manure as fertilizer.

As essential as the pigs were to the peasant economy, their fate was sealed once the African swine fever was discovered. An acute, febrile, highly contagious viral disease with a 99% mortality rate, it was initially recognized in Kenya in 1909. In 1971 it appeared for the first time in the Western Hemisphere, in Cuba, where 460,000 swine were killed to eliminate the disease. In 1978 it turned up in the Dominican Republic after a local pig supposedly ate contaminated ham from Spain. The vi rus quickly jumped the 200-mile common border into Haiti. Haitians recall seeing pigs fall dead in their tracks on the road and in the fields. But no one was able to determine accurately whether the deaths were all attributable to swine fever, or to hog cholera or some other epidemic disease. Many Haitians contend that only a few pigs were afflicted with the dread African swine fever. Says one poultry raiser: "The farmers saw no reason for the pigs to be killed."

A bounty of $300 is now being offered for any remaining black pig, dead or alive, that can be turned up. That is a huge sum in rural Haiti, but voodoo priests are rumored to be hiding some native swine for use in their rituals. Explains one priest: "Some little gods will accept a black goat in place of a pig, but the important gods will not."

Whether the Haitian land and Haitian peasant will also accept a substitute for the black pig remains doubtful. Many farmers, even if they can afford new U.S. stock, may have to wait as long as seven years for replacement pigs. "The loss is in calculable; a whole way of life has been destroyed," says one Haitian economist. "This is the worst calamity ever to befall the peasant."

With reporting by Bernard Diederich/Port-au-Prince