China ( 2,800 dead pigs found in china's drinking water )

More than 2,800 decomposing pigs have reportedly been pulled from the upper reaches of Shanghai’s Huangpu river – a source of drinking water for some of the mega-city’s 23 million inhabitants.

How so many pigs got there and why they died remains a mystery, although local media reports have suggested the animals may have been dumped in the river by an unscrupulous farmer from the neighbouring province of Zhejiang.

On Monday, authorities announced they had detected traces of porcine circovirus, a disease that affects pigs but which is not believed to infect humans, in the river.

However, authorities insisted there was no risk drinking water supplies would be contaminated and said tests of the Huangpu's waters had found no trace of foot and mouth disease, blue-ear pig disease or swine fever.

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  11 Mar 2013

The pigs were first discovered on Thursday, five days ago. Graphic photographs of the bloated, floating carcasses circulating online did little to calm residents' nerves.
"We have to act quickly to remove them all for fear of causing water pollution," Xu Rong, the environmental chief in Shanghai's Songjiang district told the state-run Global Times newspaper. "So far, water quality has not been affected but we have to remove the pigs as quickly as possible and can't let their bodies rot in the water."
On Monday lunchtime environmental protection workers were continuing their rescue operation, hauling pig after pig from the murky waters around Hengliaojing Creek, around 40 miles from central Shanghai.