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A dead pig is seen in a dirty tributary of the Yangtze River, in central China's Hebei province, some 750 miles from the city of Shanghai, in a photo taken on March 12, 2013. The number of dead pigs found in the Huangpu River, which runs through China's commercial hub Shanghai, has reached more than 13,000, state media reported on March 18.
BEIJING – To the chagrin of Shanghai city residents, there’s more “pork chop soup” on the menu for the foreseeable future.
More than a week since authorities in Shanghai started pulling thousands of dead pigs from one of the city’s major waterways, the Huangpu River, municipal authorities in that city of 23 million are continuing to pull hundreds of carcasses from its waterways each day, bringing the total since last week to over 13,000.
Workers on Sunday pulled nearly 500 pigs from the Huangpu, bringing the total found from that river alone to over 9,500. The Huangpu River supplies over a fifth of Shanghai’s drinking water.
As the pig tally creeps up, Shanghai government officials have been struggling to put a positive spin on the ghoulish images popping up each day from the city’s waterways.
Shanghai is in the process of burning some of the 13,000 pig bodies found in a major waterway. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
A report Monday in People’s Daily, the official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party, focused on the stepped up food and water quality tests across the city. It also earnestly noted that not only have the numbers of pigs being pulled from the rivers dropped, but the size of them too.
Citing a report from Shanghai’s city government, the paper stated that two thirds of the most recent carcasses found were piglets, suggesting that the worse may have passed.
Social media outrage
Still, the daily sight of carcasses being pulled from the city’s waterways for disposal has angered the public and sparked a spirited discussion on China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo.
Reports that many of the pigs found have tested positive for porcine circovirus, a virus that has killed large numbers of pigs in the region in recent months, has also raised suspicions about the safety of Shanghai’s water supply.
“The water must have been polluted [by these dead pigs],” wrote one user named Lujun, “Authorities are being dishonest and trying to hide something.”
“The government is as corrupt as these dead pigs,” another user using the name Ziyoudeweini wrote disgustedly. “I feel so cold. Who can we count on?”
“Water quality in the Huangpu River has been normal up to now,” one official at the Shanghai Information Office assured NBC News Monday. He also stressed that porcine circovirus cannot be contracted by humans.
Where are they coming from?
Shanghai officials have stepped up surveillance for dead pigs around the Huangpu River and have called upon local government in the nearby city of Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province to step up their own searches.
Just northeast of Shanghai, Jiaxing is believed to be the source of many of the dead pigs floating down into Shanghai. Shanghai’s Information Office officials declined to speculate on whether Jiaxing was the sole source of all the pigs, but told NBC News that the prefecture was the focus of a joint Shanghai-Jiaxing investigation.
An official at the Jiaxing Environmental Protection Agency declined to comment on the progress of the investigation late Monday.
But steps were being taken in Jiaxing to curb the continued dumping of pigs into the region’s waterways. The city’s local newspaper, Jiaxing Daily, reported that leaflets had been passed out to farmers in the region, urging them to properly dispose of dead pigs with local authorities rather than quietly dumping them into the river.
Jiaxing is likely not the only community to be dumping dead pigs into its waterways, as reports indicate that porcine circovirus has spiked across farming communities this winter, killing more pigs than usual. Many have speculated that farmers have been attempting to discretely dispose of the sick pigs rather than reporting them to authorities and risk investigation.
NBC News’ Danny Zhang contributed to this report.
Related links
More than 2,800 dead pigs found in Chinese river
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Leave a Comment:
Define "normal" as regards Chinese environmental standards. Ick...
normal as we haven't heard alot people been send to hosiptal for treatment yet
My thoughts exactly. I noticed they said "normal" not safe.
Bunch-a savages over there
So should we let the Republicans get rid of the US EPA?
Should change your name to NotaWakehead
Reno 911, who's the liar? The Repukelican party has been trying to weaken the EPA to the point of being worthless since the beginning and you know it, so stop LYING.
On another note I think we should purchase all these diseased dead pigs and "accidentally" drop them over Tehran on the way back.
I suppose America can expect a large influx of cheap dog food from China in the months ahead.
Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Mike Rogers
Republicans-take-aim-at-epa
www.salon.com/2011/01/26/newt_gingrich_epa/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfnmEzRLEn4
Michelle Bachmann
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/michele-bachmann-abolish-the-epa-video.html
The Republicans have a lot in common with their business partners running the Chinese government. Just full of propaganda.
Typical Republican - you asked for evidence. He posted some. Then you go on an unrelated flame against Obama rather than speak to the EVIDENCE. It is Republican dogma to weaken the EPA and you KNOW IT. So who is the real liar here? The problem with the Republican showing in the last election wasn't that people didn't understand their message, it was that people DID!
Typical Republican - you asked for evidence. He posted some. Then you go on an unrelated flame against Obama rather than speak to the EVIDENCE. It is Republican dogma to weaken the EPA and you KNOW IT. So who is the real liar here? The problem with the Republican showing in the last election wasn't that people didn't understand their message, it was that people DID!
Sorry D Russell. I wanted to say the same thing, but you did it so well, I just plagiarized :-)
"Many have speculated that farmers have been attempting to discretely dispose of the sick pigs rather than reporting them to authorities and risk investigation."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, how discrete... 13,000 dead pigs in a Shanghai river. Wouldn't it be a given that all the pig farmers anywhere along that river would now be investigated as to their discretionary measures (having made world wide news?) Maybe the pig virus can't be passed to people but the bacteria released from thousands of dead, decomposing pigs sure can... especially if the bowels begin to bloat and explode.
They are a new breed with gills that have been secretly developed to overthrow the government. Didn't think they would plug up from the pollution. The next generation have wings and can fly.
OK Reno, since you are too retarded to even do a simple web search like "Republicans Quotes EPA" like a big boy, here is a starting point for your research (if you are capable of such an intellectual feat): (crickets indeed!).
"Yet leading Republican presidential candidates have continued to call for cutting federal funds to the agency
In a recent CNN debate, Michele Bachmann went so far as to dub the agency the greatest threat to American jobs, and Jon Huntsman has averred new environmental regulations should be shelved until the economy picks up. Rick Perry, for his part, agrees.
In an interview with CBN News earlier this month, Perry asked that the "EPA back down these regulations that are causing businesses to hesitate to spend money,” and as recently as last year he charged that when the EPA declared carbon dioxide a toxic substance, “they put countless businesses, farms, even large churches in their cross hairs."
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has opposed the regulation of carbon dioxide, stating on the campaign trail in New Hampshire: “We have made a mistake ... in saying that the EPA should regulate carbon emissions. I don’t think that was the intent of the original legislation, and I don’t think carbon is a pollutant in the sense of harming our bodies.”
Presidential hopeful Herman Cain has vowed to effectively gut the EPA within the first 30 days of being elected, handing environmental regulatory duties over to an "independent commission" headed by oil and gas executives. Ron Paul, in an interview several years back, called the regulatory agency completely unnecessary, while Newt Gingrich has called for the total elimination of the agency."
The Shanghai government said the Huangpu river, supplies 22 percent of the city's drinking water. The reported pig count is now above 6,600...
The Shanghai government said that their quality of drinking water remained within national standards, despite widespread worries over water quality among the city's 23 million residents. So was Chicago, when their rivers were catching fire...
Zhu Yi, a professor at China Agricultural University, said that the country's vast number of small-scale farmers were "hard to supervise and regulate".
"Every country has its own problems," she said, "The highly industrialised European Union was caught up by the horse meat scandal."
Zhong Nanshan, the president of the China Medical Association, in 2012 warned that air pollution could become the biggest health issue...
China's leading cause of death is now Environmental caused CANCERS, replacing HIV/TB...
China is a World Leader...
You CANNOT; breath their air, drink their water, eat their food or enjoy their women...
But they supply 97% of the World's 'Rare Earths' and keeps WalMart stocked... Ha! Ha!
Normal?!?
Well... Let's see some officials dipping cups into the water and drinking it!!!
Reno 911, when Ronald Reagan appointed oil lobbyist
James Watt to head the EPA, the jig was up. That was
a blatant sell-out and the repubs have been selling-out
freedom,
democracy and our environment ever since.
OK, all you people who still believe China is OK for dealing with, consider that a polluted waterway, from which drinking water and water for manufacturing is taken -- without filtration -- has 13,000 dead pigs in it and the water quality is considered 'normal'. That should really get the attention of any would be Muslims in the area. China is a sinkhole of pollution and filth and some Americans still believe "China is OK". Now, will you be buying pork products from China any time soon?
i don't know where you get the idea is not filtrated, if there were people sick due to this, we should already heard it by now. since majority of city dweller drink the water.
Obviously, the people of Shanghai have a built up immunity to pollution and disease. Look at that water. Much of it is not even water because water does not bubble and have a slimy black film to it.....
Many cash-strapped communities across Metro Detroit cannot afford to replace aging sewage systems that have dumped a combined 80 billion gallons of raw and partially treated waste into local waterways over the last two years, according to a startling report from the Detroit free press.
Where do you get your drinking water from New York?
Least the Chinese can still sell the water and carcasses to Wal Mart.
Reno,
Reality is that China is a big place. Have you ever been there? Plus, there is corruption everywhere.
Enough chlorine to kill the porcine circovirus would make the water poisonous.
Water treatment facilities in China have been proven over and over again to be sub-par.
Anything else I can do for you today? Show you Obama's birth certificate?
Might want to compare populations before making statements like that.
s002wjh,
No... China won't let people know if anyone was getting sick from it. Those who do become sick are probably transported to a different hospital and listed under a different type of illness to avoid media interest.
China, covers a little more area than the US. About 5% more. China also has about five times as many people as the US. 1 billion more. That's a lot. So it depends on what you mean by bigger.
Sweet and Sour Pork,
Pork Dumplings
Chinese Pork Tenderloin, Barbecue pork
Chinese Pork Fried Rice
CHINESE STYLE BARBECUE PORK is the best.
Pork and ham products coming to your local Wal-Mart soon.
Eat it up Walmartions
The thousands of dead pigs have drawn attention to China's poorly regulated farm production. Animals that die from disease can end up in the country's food supply chain or improperly disposed of, despite laws against the practice.
In Wenling, also in Zhejiang, authorities announced last week that 46 people had been jailed for up to six-and-a-half years for processing and selling pork from more than 1,000 diseased pigs.
China faced one its biggest food-safety scandals in 2008 when the industrial chemical melamine was found to have been illegally added to dairy products, killing at least six babies and making 300,000 people ill.
In another recent incident, the American fast-food giant KFC faced controversy after revealing that some Chinese suppliers provided chicken with high levels of antibiotics, in what appeared to be an industry-wide practice.
Got Bacon !
"Normal" obviously means horrifyingly bad already. Just look at the film and bubbles of who knows what in the top photo and all the garbage in the video. They call that normal.
The reason the water quality is deemed "normal" is because it is normally a cesspool even without the pigs. It is so polluted that the addition of 13,000 pig carcasses has no real effect on the rampant bacteria in it. This is how animal viruses get ultimately transmitted to humans. The virus is taken into the human body where it eventually mutates and transmits itself elsewhere as a human virus. Don't be surprised if we don't hear about it. China is not known for it's openness inregards to it's inadequacies. Just look at the fact that farmers are dumping sick, dead pigs into the river. That's medieval, people polluting their own water. It's a disgusting country.
Have these farmers ever heard of a shovel and a big hole. Any idiot can tell them tossing dead diseased animals in a waterway only speads the contagian. How stupid can you get.
Maybe burning them would have been better, no?
They don't care about those living downstream. All they care about is removing a problem cheaply. The same as dumping sewage in the waterways. Very gross.
Wow...they have some serious problems in China. Communism seems to need tweeking.
Bottle water sales will be increasing I suspect.
s002whj is the Chinese Communist party President.
You reap what you sew. Shanghai Info Agency telling their own people, dont worry, humans cant contract this, water is safe to dring, etc etc. The same group of goons who were probably telling the US government that they were not responsible for the computer hacking. I hope every hack over there that was behind the hacking has the chits and the swine flu for weeks to come. From the looks of that water next to that pig, i wouldnt let my dog drink that chit.
Actually, the expression you're groping for is "You reap what you sow", which is a whole lot funnier considering that we're talking about pigs.
Some people rip what they sew.
When the State tightly controls ALL forms of media and information, they could have thousands of people dying of plague and decide not to panic the public, call that "normal" and none of us would know ANY different. In the Western world we only have to filter through the biases of our news media, in China the government decides what the people need to know and if they need to know..
Well... this will certainly "reek" havoc.
This is normal; Chinese waterways are known for their pork flavoring.
Really, nobody knows where 13,000 pigs came from? This a joke?
I agree. Surely someone out there knows where 13,000 pigs are MISSING. It's not like they all decided to take a swim at the same time.
the chinese wouldn't lie to there own people would they?? buyer beware...look out for more tainted dog and cat treats...gotta use them somewhere....
For such a 'modern' country, they are pretty ignorant. But then again, where do you think all the asian flu, swine flu, avian bird flu, comes from.
China is a very dangerous virus to the rest of the world.
Not a lot different than our own feedlots.
the water is as clean as the water comming into the homes that sit above fracking sites. just ask the govt or the oil companies
The water's normal? Who is their water quality guy, Baghdad Bob?
Why are we humans so hell-bent on destroying our home?
China is may well be the world's largest polluter - the US may still have something to say about that - but they are hardly the first to completely disregard the environment in pursuit of "progress". The Russians (excuse me, the Soviets) tried hard to reverse the flow of some of their major rivers, to literally turn rivers like the Pechora and Kama around so they would no longer "drain uselessly" into the Arctic Ocean, and instead bring water to Central Asia.
And that's only one example. How about Chernobyl? Do you think that's the only place where the Soviets let radiation out of the bag? I bet it's not - it was just so big they couldn't keep the public from finding out. I bet there were any number of smaller accidents that went unreported due to state control of the media.
The environmental disasters left by the Soviets and their little Eastern European Communist buddies will take generations to clean up, and that's only if the current governments have the will to spend the billions of dollars (or euros or rubles or whatever) necessary. The Chinese seem to be every bit as intent on screwing up the environment just as much, if not more.
What to do about it? Boycott Chinese products? Sounds great. How likely do you think such a boycott would be? Probably not very, IMO. Make a whole bunch of noise about it? Sure, but do you think Xi Jinping cares one tiny little bit? What else can we do? I don't know. I'm willing to listen to suggestions.
One day we'll pay for the disdainful manner with which we have treated the Earth. It probably won't be you and me who has to pay the bill. Maybe it will be our kids, or our grandkids, or someone further down the line. Whoever they are, they'll look back at those of us who were alive in the late 20th century and early 21st, and they'll say something like, "What a bunch of selfish, arrogant idiots. They could have stopped this if only they'd had some brains and some guts."
“The government is as corrupt as these dead pigs,” another user using the name Ziyoudeweini wrote disgustedly. “I feel so cold. Who can we count on?”
That statement says it all about the government of China....and how much food do we import from there?
How are chinese people able to remain content despite being screwed by their own government? They are indeed amazing folks..... Republicans would love to have citizens like that around here.
Any people can arm themselves if they need to. You don't need the governments permission to make a gun if it becomes necessary. They are not that complicated. In fact they are extremely uncomplicated, thats why they work so well.
So spare us "we're doomed if they regulate guns" bs. The only people screwed by gun control are criminals, and straw purchasers.
You obviously know nothing about China... Have you ever been there? I have.
PS, you don't need "a shop" to build a gun. Or explosives.
They could have used all that pig fat in a new skin softening oinkment....
!!!