BAGHDAD (AP) — The Iraqi government decided Thursday to kill three wild boars at the Baghdad Zoo amid worldwide fears of swine flu, officials said.
No cases of swine flu have been reported in Iraq, and global health officials have said there is no evidence that people have contracted swine flu by eating pork or handling pigs. But Iraqi officials say they don't want to take any chances.
Iraq has few, if any, pigs used as livestock because its dominant religion, Islam, considers the animals impure. Wild boars roam the countryside in some areas.
"The ministry of agriculture made a decision today to kill the three pigs in Baghdad Zoo as a precautionary measure," Dr. Sabah Jassim Mozan, the head of the ministry's veterinarian department, told The Associated Press.
No date has been set for their killing, according to Dr. Ihssan Jaafar Ahmed, who heads Iraq's swine flu committee. Zoo officials could not be reached for comment. Earlier Thursday, the mud-covered boars grazed quietly inside their large pen at the zoo.
Iraq's decision is among several drastic measures governments have taken to combat swine flu. Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country even though no cases have been reported there.
World health experts say many of these measures may not stop the disease from spreading. The World Health Organization, which has stressed it has not found any association between pigs and the disease in humans, said Thursday it would stop using the term "swine flu."
The fast-spreading virus has been blamed for more than 160 deaths in Mexico and one in the United States and has been detected in several other countries, including Israel.
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