A Chinese police crackdown on illegal pork sales has resulted in mass dumping of dead pigs in Shanghai’s river, more than 2,800 carcasses floated into the city in just one day.
The effort to keep infected pork off dinner tables may be fuelling new health fears, as Shanghai residents worry over contamination to the city’s water supply, although authorities say no signs have been detected.
They have been pulling out the swollen and rotting pigs, some with their internal organs visible, since Friday.
City officials said that the number of dumped adult and piglet carcasses retrieved had reached 2,813. It added that the drinking water quality had not been affected.
Resident Huang Beibei was the first to expose the problem when he took photos of the carcasses and uploaded them on to the internet. ``This is the water we are drinking,'' he wrote. ``What is the government doing to address this?''
Mr Huang said he is most concerned about water safety. “Though the government says the water is safe, at least I do not believe it – given the number of the pigs in the river. These pigs have died from disease,” Mr Huang said.
In China pigs that have died from disease should be either incinerated or buried, but some unscrupulous farmers and animal control officials have sold problem carcasses to slaughterhouses. Their pork has ended up in markets. As a food safety problem, it has drawn attention from China’s Ministry of Public Security, which has made it a priority to crack down on gangs that purchase dead diseased pigs and process them for illegal profits.