Floating Carcasses Prompt Safety Concerns

Floating Carcasses

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The discovery of a huge number of dead pigs floating in rivers, lakes and streams in the area around Shanghai has once again put China's livestock and food industries in the spotlight.


Zhulin became a household name after reports on March 5 that huge numbers of pig carcasses, an abnormally high proportion of them piglets, had been discovered floating in the waters of Shanghai's Huangpu River and rivers and lakes in neighboring Jiaxing.

In the past few days, around 13,000 carcasses have been fished out of the Huangpu River - which supplies 22 percent of Shanghai's tap water - according to the Shanghai Municipal Government.

"While it's wrong for people to dump carcasses in the river, it's almost inevitable, given that the disposal of so many dead pigs requires land and investment, which are usually beyond the capacity of individual farmers. However, the government mechanism to compensate farmers or solve the problem is inadequate," said Feng Yonghui, general manager of the online pig industry researcher Soozhu.



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