Zabbaleen
The Zabbaleen ( ', ) is a word which literally means "garbage people" in Egyptian Arabic. The contemporary use of the word in Egyptian Arabic is to mean "garbage collectors". In cultural contexts, the word refers to teenagers and adults who have served as Cairo's informal garbage collectors since approximately the 1940s. The Zabbaleen (singular: ', ) are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means "pig-pen operators." The word ' came from the Egyptian Arabic word ' (, ) which means "garbage".
Zabbaleen
Another negative effect of the pig cull on the Zabbaleen was the loss of the economic value of the pigs themselves. According to Fahmi and Sutton, pigs are the main source of income for the Zabbaleen. Before the cull, the Zabbaleen had collected 6,000 tons of MSW daily, of which 60 percent was organic waste which was consumed by the pigs. Every six months, the Zabbaleen would take their pigs to traders, earning around 450LE (approximately 80 USD) per pig. Although the Egyptian government made financial compensations for some of pigs slaughtered; compensations were not given to all of the Zabbaleen who lost pigs to the cull and those who received compensation received far less money compared to what they would have received from selling the pigs to traders. According to one Zabbaleen pig breeder, "The government paid me between LE 50 (US$ 10) and LE 250 (US$ 50) for each pig I lost, depending on its size, whilst meat processors would have given me as much as LE 1,000 (US$ 200)." The pig cull also resulted in increased cases of malnutrition and anaemia in Zabbaleen children because prior to the cull, pork had been the only affordable source of animal protein for most of the Zabbaleen.