hattip Pathfinder
By Bloomberg News on March 12, 201
Shanghai said it’s increasing the frequency of water quality checks after almost 6,000 dead pigs were found in a river that runs through the city.
The number of dead pigs found from the Songjiang section of the Huangpu river more than doubled from the previous tally to 5,916 as of 3 p.m. yesterday, the Shanghai government said on its official microblog. The retrieval of the dead hogs has slowed, it said.
Shanghai authorities had said in an earlier statement it had restored clean water to parts of the river in Maogang, where the carcasses were first discovered. Investigations by food regulatory authorities show that there’s no sign diseased pork has entered the city’s markets, according to a posting on the city’s website.
Preliminary investigations showed the dead pigs, which include piglets and mature hogs, had floated down the river from neighboring Zhejiang province, the Shanghai government has said.
The discovery of the hogs is the latest scare in China, where leaders have come under criticism for the handling of health and environmental issues. The government announced on March 10 a plan for a regulator with broader authority to ensure food and drug safety and said the agriculture ministry will oversee the quality of farm products, underpinning its pledge to crack down on violations and better protect consumers.
Shanghai Bund
The Huangpu river cuts through the center of China’s financial hub, running past Shanghai’s historic waterfront Bund area. Songjiang and Jinshan are more than 30 kilometers (18 miles) southwest of the city center, which is home to the country’s largest stock market and the China headquarters of HSBC Holdings Plc and Citigroup Inc.
“As long as diseased pigs don’t find their way into the food supply, there won’t be any major impact on demand,” James Feng, general manager of Soozhu.com, China’s biggest independent hog researcher, said in a telephone interview from Beijing. “The government needs to better enforce laws governing the disposal of dead pigs and reporting of outbreaks, to discourage farmers from their habit of discarding the animals in ditches and rivers.”
Wholesale pork prices have fallen almost five percent since Feb. 1, according to Ministry of Commerce data.
Hog Disease
Porcine circovirus, a common disease among hogs, was found in a sample taken from the river, Shanghai’s agriculture department said on March 11, citing the city’s animal disease control authorities. Tests conducted hourly on the river, which provides drinking water for some of the municipality’s 23 million residents, were negative for other diseases including foot-and-mouth, swine fever, hog cholera and blue ear, it said.
There’s no evidence that porcine circovirus is a safety risk or causes illness in humans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday that ear tags from 14 of the hogs showed they originated from Jiaxing, a major pig-farming region in Zhejiang province. Investigations conducted since the carcasses were first discovered showed no sign of a “serious” epidemic among the livestock in the city, according to Xinhua.
The mortality rate of hogs in Jiaxing is currently within “normal” limits, Xinhua said, citing Jiang Hao, a deputy director of the Jiaxing husbandry and veterinary bureau. There may have been many factors that contributed to the deaths of these pigs, including farming techniques, environmental conditions, climate and illness, Jiang was cited as saying.
Pig Farmers
Jiaxing has more than 100,000 pig farmers and about 4.5 million hogs are slaughtered there each year, Xinmin.cn reported separately, citing Jiang. Farmers caught discarding dead pigs irresponsibly may face fines of no more than 3,000 yuan ($482), according to the newspaper.
China had more than 460 million hogs in inventory as of December, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture. The nation is the world’s biggest consumer and producer of pork. Ministry of Commerce data showed prices of the meat fell 1.7 percent in the week to March 3, before the carcasses were first reported in Shanghai.
The discovery of dead hogs in Shanghai has become one of the most-popular topics on Sina Corp.’s Weibo microblog service, its website showed.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-03-11/shanghai-races-to-clean-river-where-2-800-dead-pigs-were-found
