Nearly 6000 dead pigs removed from Shanghai river

PanARMENIAN.Net - Officials say the number of pig carcasses found in Shanghai's Huangpu River has risen to nearly 6 000, BBC News reported.

In a statement, Shanghai authorities said that 5 916 dead pigs had been removed from the river by Tuesday, March 12. But it said water from the river was safe, with water quality meeting government-set standards.

It is believed that the pigs may have come from Jiaxing in the neighboring Zhejiang province, although the cause of their deaths is still not clear.

In a statement, the Shanghai municipal government said that the water in Huangpu River, which is a major source of drinking water for Shanghai, was safe. It also said that no diseased pork had been detected in markets.

However, the news has been met with scepticism by some users on weibo, China's Twitter equivalent, where the hashtag "Huangpu River dead pigs" has emerged.

The government statement said that the number of pigs being salvaged from the river appeared to be decreasing. Laboratory tests have identified that some of the pigs had porcine circovirus, a common disease that affects pigs but does not affect humans.

Reports suggest the dead pigs may have been dumped from pig farms in Jiaxing, upstream of Shanghai. "We don't exclude the possibility that the dead pigs found in Shanghai were from Jiaxing. But we are not absolutely sure," Jiaxing local government spokesman Wang Dengfeng told a news conference.