Cairo  - Egyptian pig farmers clashed with police in Cairo on Sunday as farmers resisted officials' attempts to slaughter their livestock, police said.

Pig farmers on the outskirts of Cairo pelted police with rocks when slaughterers and health officials arrived to continue culling. Police responded with teargas, arrested 14 pig farmers and blocked off the road leading to the area, police told the German Press Agency dpa.

The Egyptian government began slaughtering Egypt's roughly 250,000 pigs last week in what was originally presented as a bid to prevent an outbreak of swine flu, but has since been presented as a bid for general health reform.

Many of the nation's pigs are raised by poor, Christian garbage-collectors who raise the pigs on waste. In the days since the slaughter began, some have complained that they had not received the promised compensation for the loss of their livestock.

Minor skirmishes broke out between officials and the farmers in recent days, but Sunday's clashes were the largest and most serious yet, police said.

Cairo's independent daily al-Masry al-Youm on Sunday reported that some of the farmers had appealed to Pope Shenouda, the head of the Coptic church, to compensate the farmers or to intercede with the government to try to stop the culling.

"The Church is not interfering in the case of slaughtering or culling pigs," said Bishop Ibram, head of the Coptic church in the oasis of Fayoum, some 150 kilometres south-west of Cairo, in remarks published in al-Masry al-Youm Sunday.

"Slaughtering animals to prevent the spread of a disease is a strategy already adopted twice in Egypt to deal with mad cow disease and bird flu," he said.

"In those cases, the owners of any animal culled got compensation. We hope this will also happen with pig farmers. This shows how just and firm the state is," Bishop Ibram said.

"There is agreement between all the responsible parties in the country and social harmony," presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad said in a statement sent to reporters Sunday. "Egyptian Copts were among the first to support this step."

After the Egyptian government announced last week it would kill the nation's pigs, officials from the World Health Organisation (WHO) said the move was unnecessary.

"All countries are taking steps to prevent this disease from becoming a pandemic," Awad said on Sunday. "There are several criticisms of the WHO ... regarding anything that has to do with this disease and how to protect against it."

"If the government did not take this step, it would be accused of negligence," Awad said Sunday. "The health of the Egyptian citizen is of more importance than these criticisms (of the culling)." (dpa)