Haiti: PEPPADEP and the Cochon Creole

Recognizing the threat that African Swine Fever constitutes for the United States and the rest of the Western Hemisphere, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has worked with countries that have suffered outbreaks. When an ASF outbreak occurred in the Dominican Republic in 1978, APHIS supported the country’s eradication program. By September 1980, all domestic pigs had been slaughtered. APHIS was also actively involved in the eradication and repopulation project in Haiti after the ASF outbreak there in 1979.

United States Department of Agriculture. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, African Swine Fever: A Foreign Threat to U.S. Hogs (January 1998).

In late 1978, when the outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF) spread to Haiti, the peasantry was devastated. In the next four years, the Haitian government, spurred by the U.S. and Canadian governments, slaughtered every pig on the island to stymie the spread of the fever.

Allen Ebert, “North American ‘Swine Aid’ an Economic Disaster for Haitian Peasants,” Multinational Monitor (December 1985)

Haiti’s program will serve as an example to solve the problems of other countries of the Hemisphere and help those countries progress…

Projet d’Eradication de la Peste Porcine Africaine et de Développement de l’elevage Porcin en Haiti (PEPPADEP). 10th Coordinating Commitee Meeting held at Peppadep-Delmas (14-16 Nov. 1983)

Though the loss of the Creole pig was devastating to Haitian agriculture, it had an even more detrimental effect on the Haitian peasant economy. The pigs were literally the banks of most Haitian peasants, the means by which Haitians paid for schoolbooks and uniforms, weddings and funerals.

Ragan Sutterfield, “Pandemics, Pigs, and Peasants: The Death and Resurrection of Haiti’s Creole Pig,” World Ark (Spring 2010)

The real loss to the peasant is incalculable … The peasant economy  is reeling from the impact of being without pigs. A whole way of life has been destroyed in this survival economy. This is the worst calamity to ever befall the peasant.

James Ridgeway and Billy Treger, “AIDing and Abetting Mayhem,” Multinational Monitor (March 1994)