On Monday I wrote about the swine flu and how it could affect markets. I also wrote about it for Taipan Insider that was released to subscribers yesterday.

But I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read this BBC News article, “Egypt slaughters pigs to stop flu.”

Egypt has between 250,000 and 400,000 pigs, and the mass slaughter are eliminating them by the thousand.

There has been 159 deaths associated with swine flue but all of them have been in Mexico, with the first U.S. death coming today with a child in Texas.

There have been two confirmed cases of Swine flu in Israel, but there has been not confirmed connection to pigs in Egypt. The country has a right to be cautious. Twenty-two people died in a bird flu outbreak in the country between 2004 and 2008.

But slaughtering all the pigs is quite over-the-top. There have been no cases of swine flu found in anyone in Egypt.