Disposal of dead pigs in an epidemic is a problem everywhere it happens. Putting them directly into the water supply of a massive city is really stupid. If it is a disease dangerous to humans it is even worse.
The only pig disease mentioned in Shanghai is porcine circovirus.
Britain's corrupt government veterinarians hid up a porcine circovirus epidemic in 1999 - 2000.
The past president of the OIE criticised Britain for not making porcine circovirus notifiable and Britain made
a massive PR effort to date it to follow the 2000-1 Foot and Mouth outbreak.
Being realistic, there is no government anywhere that would not mount a cover-up at least for a short period but Britain has managed 13 years of PR driven criminal deception and intimidation.
Britain, then still reeling from Mad Cow - BSE, was merely the first and the worst, or perhaps most long lived and outrageous.
Those interested in researching the scandal will find much of interest in the archives of the newsgroup uk.business.agriculture, accessible via Google Groups.
Do not post on uk.business.agriculture - you will attract determined paid lobbyists and stalkers.
Full South China Morning Post article here
Dead Pigs
Pig carcass furore still raising worries, despite PR campaign
Public is still not convinced of reasons offered for mass deaths or promises water is safe to drink
Sunday, 24 March, 2013 [UPDATED: 04:49]
It's been more than a fortnight since the appearance of thousands of pig carcasses floating down the Huangpu River through Shanghai grabbed headlines across the country.
Officials in China's largest city and in Jiaxing, the suspected source of the dead animals about 100km upstream, as well as the central government, have tried hard to calm the public by insisting there had been no major animal disease outbreak and that pork and water supplies were safe.
But questions about the exact source of the carcasses and who should be responsible continue to be raised by the media...
...However, neither Shanghai nor Jiaxing seem to have plans to trace the remainder, which at last count totalled more than 16,000. And, despite being the main pig-raising region for Shanghai, Jiaxing insists that is not the sole source of the carcasses.
Jiaxing's explanation - that abnormally cold weather early in the year had made piglets, which constituted the bulk of the dead pigs, more prone to the common porcine circovirus, apparently failed to convince the media and the public.
The Beijing Evening News said it was unreasonable for governments to be still giving ambiguous reasons for such a large number of dead pigs three weeks after the incident was first reported. "How could related departments not know anything about the death of so many pigs?" it said...
...But the incident, at least in media's eyes, is far from over. A number of reports have appeared about pig carcasses in other rivers around the country.
This article first appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition on Mar 24, 2013 as Pig carcass furore still raising worries, despite PR campaign
