The number of dead pigs retrieved from the Huangpu River running through China's commercial hub Shanghai has exceeded 13,000, as the exact origin of the carcasses remains unknown.
About 9,500 carcasses have been pulled from the river that supplies more than a fifth of the city's drinking water, as workers fished nearly 500 more pig carcasses yesterday, the Shanghai government said today.
Upstream, the government of Jiaxing said it had recovered around 3,600 from streams in its jurisdiction.
Searches along the upper reaches of the Huangpu have been intensified and authorities are monitoring waters bordering Jiaxing to prevent more pig carcasses from floating beyond the area, South China Morning Post quoted government spokesman Xu Wei as saying.
Shanghai has blamed farmers in Jiaxing in neighbouring Zhejiang province for dumping pigs which died of disease into the river upstream, where another 3,601 dead animals had been recovered since the infestation began earlier this month, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
The Jiaxing government, however, has said the area is not the sole source of the carcasses.
The pigs were first detected in the farms of Shanghai's southwestern district of Songjiang, but it said the farms were not to blame after carrying out checks, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said today.
The quality of the river water and tap water in Shanghai remained normal, and food-quality checks in the city's markets for six straight days did not uncover any unqualified pork, the government reiterated yesterday.
A series of similar carcass discoveries have been reported across the nation since residents started complaining on March 5 about finding dead pigs in the Huangpu.
There has been an abnormally high number of dead hogs following an outbreak of porcine circovirus, a common swine disease that does not affect humans, plus changeable weather this winter, the Ministry of Agriculture said.
