Mennonite
Central
Committee

Swine fever led to U.S. campaign to kill pigs in Haiti

Latin America & Caribbean

A particularly bleak chapter in Haiti's relationship with the United States began after African Swine Fever was discovered in the Dominican Republic and Haiti in the 1970s.

The United States, driven by concerned hog producers, launched a 13-month, $23 million campaign to kill Haiti's pigs, which ranked among Haitian farmers' most valuable possessions.

The country's dictator, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, offered little resistance.

The effects were horrendous — and still vividly remembered by farmers in Haiti's Artibonite Valley. Desperate for an alternative source of income, peasants accelerated the cutting of trees to make charcoal — a sad practice that has stripped the country of all but 1 or 2 percent of its forests. As reported by the historian Elizabeth Abbott, school attendance dropped by as much as 50 percent because of the hardship families experienced.

After several years, U.S. hog producers sent their own breeds of pigs to Haitian farmers through a second phase of the U.S.-sponsored program. However, the United States required recipients to build pigsties and purchase expensive commercial pig feed, which had the effect of excluding many poor farmers. Additionally, the U.S. pigs were ill-suited to the Haitian climate and ironically got sick more often.