Nothing spells trouble like dead pigs in a river. This week, more than 6,600 pig carcasses have been pulled from the river that runs through the heart of Shanghai, China?s financial hub, eliciting public disgust and anger.
However the dead pigs of Shanghai are hardly the worst thing to hit China?s rivers. After all, more than 39 per cent of the water in China?s main rivers is already so toxic that any human contact should be avoided, according to a 2011 government study. Shanghai?s main river, the Huangpu, is pristine by comparison ? with or without a few decaying pig bodies. So perhaps it shouldn?t have been surprising that city authorities swiftly declared that the little porkers had not affected the safety of Shanghai?s tap water.
In an effort to reassure Shanghai residents, the government explained that only 22 per cent of Shanghai?s water supply came from the river areas where floating pigs had been discovered. Further trying to put a positive spin on the story, the government announced Wednesday that it pulled only 685 pigs from the river, pointing out that this was a 40 per cent decrease over the number of pig carcasses pulled out the day before.
Shanghai residents have not exactly been won over by the PR campaign. ?These last few days, whenever I take a drink of water, I think of those dead pigs and feel nauseous,? wrote Yin Huifen, a Shanghai-based writer, on her Weibo account. ?No one has dared to step out and apologise for this, or offered to help subsidise our water bills.?
Other users of Weibo compared it to the hazardous smog that blanketed Beijing this past winter.
?Beijing people say they are the luckiest ? they open the window and get a free cigarette. Shanghai people say, ?Oh that?s nothing, we turn on the tap and get pork chop soup,?? wrote Kaifu Lee, a Beijing-based entrepreneur.
The latest developments in the mystery of the dead pigs suggest that even more pork chop soup may lie ahead. On Thursday morning, the Shanghai government said it had elicited a confession from a pig farm in Jiaxing, a town that lies 100km upstream from Shanghai, which illegally dumped some (but not all) of the dead pigs in the river. Jiaxing is a major pig raising area, selling more than seven million pigs last year.
Jiaxing was also home to an epidemic that killed 70,000 pigs this past winter?and the whereabouts of the rest of the dead pigs are unclear. The town has an official disposal facility for pigs that die of disease, but local officials say it sometimes struggles to handle all the bodies from the many pig farms in the area.
A local official in Jiaxing?s Xinfeng township said the growing practice of illicit pig dumping was also tied to the recent crackdown on illegal pig sales and stricter sanitation rules. As standards tighten, some local farmers avoid reporting pig deaths to authorities so that they can dodge strict sanitation measures such as the quarantine or slaughter of the rest of their brood.
In other words, Shanghai?s dead pig plague may not be over quite yet.
Additional reporting by Yan Zhang in Shanghai and Gwen Chen in Beijing.
Related reading:
Anger at dead pigs in Shanghai River, FT
China: riding the hog cycle, beyondbrics
Source: http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2013/03/14/shanghai-pig-pollution-more-pork-chop-soup-to-come/
jason wu for target underwood buffalo wings superbowl kick off time 2012 new york giants hot wings recipe 7 layer dip recipe
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন