Your Daily Chinese Rotting Pig Carcass Update - 16,000 Swine, 1,000 Ducks & Lots Of Local Jokes
Over the last fortnight, more than 16,000 dead pigs have been recovered from tributaries of the Huangpu, the river that arcs through Shanghai. Mottled and swollen, adult hogs and piglets were first spotted upstream in Henglaojing creek, their bellies forming pearlescent domes among the river debris. Finding a dead hog in this creek isn't an anomaly. Farmers have been using the waterways as a dumping ground for deceased stock for decades, residents say. It is the numbers that the locals find shocking.
What worries Shanghai residents is that the waterway supplies more than 20% of the city's tap water. Early tests revealed the pigs carry porcine circovirus, which isn't infectious to humans, and the water was ruled safe. Though there has been no official explanation for their appearance, tags in the pigs' ears trace them to Jiaxing in the neighbouring Zhejiang province. Jiaxing is an area where the pork industry flourishes and where 70,000 pigs died this year because of extreme weather conditions and "crude raising techniques", according to state media.
Citizens have responded with outrage to the Henglaojing incident. "That thousands of dead pigs were dumped in the Huangpu secretly isn't news", said Li Mingsheng, a well-known writer, on his weibo (microblog) account. "It's also not news that 20 million Shanghai residents have drunk dead pig broth for half a month. What's news is that the Shanghai water bureau claims the Huangpu's water meets health standards." Others responded more humorously. In one joke spread through weibo, a Beijing resident boasts that he just has to open the window to have free cigarettes. A Shanghai resident retorts: "That's nothing, we turn on our taps and have pork chop soup."
My reaction is more despondent. I visited Zhejiang late last year to report on the booming factory-farm industry, interviewing a young man whose local eco system has been decimated by the arrival of a factory farm. A dead pig in a river is gripping, sensationalist, macabre. But it hints at a deeper crisis: the impact the burgeoning meat industry in the developing world is having on the planet.
EDIT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/23/china-loves-pork-pig-carcasses
= new reply since forum marked as read
I agree with all of the above...this is gross and about SO much more than just a localized issue.
It bothers me that the headline mentions ducks too now, that may mean a disease crossover...?
It also bothers me that the people ARE still drinking and using the water... sounds like the opening to a zombie movie 
