Dead Pigs In Shanghai River Exceeds 16,000 Prompting Public Concern

Authorities in Shanghai said they are "basically finished" with the dirty work of purging the city's main river of dead pigs, with the total number of recovered carcasses estimated at more than 16,000.

Sunday only 98 dead pigs were pulled from the river and 93 were found Saturday, the first time the drifts of swine had dipped below the century mark in days, according to a report from Raw Story.

"The city's water territory has already basically finished the work of fishing out the floating dead pigs," said a Shanghai government statement released late on Sunday.

As of Sunday afternoon the number of dead pigs removed from Shanghai's Huangpu River, which supplies nearly a quarter of the metropolis' drinking water, had reportedly reached 10,924.

The report stated an additional 5,528 pig carcasses were found upstream in Jiaxing in neighboring Zhejian province, where officials from Shanghai have accused farmers of dumping dead pigs into the river.

Dead pigs have increasingly been found in the river ever since it became illegal to sell pig carcasses for meat, according to a Guardian report. There once was a thriving trade in dead pigs that ended abruptly when a 2012 ruling gave three people life in prison for selling dead pigs.

A 2011 environmental protection report found  that in the city of Shaoxing some 7.7 million pigs were farmed that year. On average two to four percent will die, meaning between 150,000 and 300,000 corpses would need to be disposed of, the Guardian reported.

Presumablely the dead pigs are being dumped into the river by farmers.  

The Guardian report quoted a man tasked with fishing the pigs from the river who said the grim work was an annual occurrence.

People are on edge and question the safety of their drinking water.

"We don't dare drink the river water," said one villager in a town southwest of Shanghai, according to the report.

Farmers' dumping dead animals into the river seems to be commonplace and the practice is difficult for authorities to control.

The latest numbers of dead pigs in the river comes on the heels of a new report of the carcasses of 1,000 ducks being found in a river in a different part of China.

News of so many dead animals found in China's rivers has ignited a wave of public concern. The BBC translated several comments from weibo, China's version of Twitter.

"Dead pigs, dead ducks... this soup is getting thicker and thicker," wrote one person.

"The dead pigs haven't even disappeared yet, and now the dead ducks emerge - does this society enjoy being competitive?" asked another.

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