© AFP Photo
Shanghai had pulled 9,460 pigs out of the Huangpu river, which supplies 22 percent of the city's drinking water, since the infestation began earlier this month, the Shanghai Daily reported.
Shanghai has blamed farmers in Jiaxing in neighbouring Zhejiang province for dumping pigs which died of disease into the river upstream, where the official Xinhua news agency said another 3,601 dead animals had been recovered so far.
The Jiaxing government has said the area is not the sole source of the carcasses, adding it had found only one producer that could be held responsible.
Shanghai said it had checked farms in its southwestern district of Songjiang, where the pigs were first detected, but found they were not to blame, the Shanghai Daily said.
The scandal has spotlighted China's troubles with food safety, adding the country's most popular meat to a growing list of food items rocked by controversy.
Samples of the dead pigs have tested positive for porcine circovirus, a common swine disease that does not affect humans.
"Due to some farming households having a weak recognition of the law, bad habits, and lack of increased supervision and capability for treatment have led to the situation," the national agriculture ministry's chief veterinarian Yu Kangzhen said.
Yu attributed a higher mortality rate among pigs to colder weather this spring, though he ruled out an epidemic, the ministry said in statement posted on its website over the weekend.
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.
Source: AFP
So, I take it these little piggies didn't go to the market, but all the way home? Home being the local river that washes away all our sins, right? Well, the piggies seem free from the situation, but not we, which doesn't exactly make me sit up and sing like in an episode of "Glee", but at least China's rapid industrialization process has reached this point of no return and the Party has newly prepared itself for the position it now finds itself confronting, ready for revolt, same as we are here in the USA, as our Dept of Homeland Security seeks protection with nearly 2 billion rounds of hollow point bullets. Minds of the state seem to think alike, don't they? At least they do seem to be on the same page of the script and that is comforting to know.