Epidemic Is Killing Pigs in Southeastern China
More Contamination from Communist China
HONG KONG, May 7 — A mysterious epidemic is killing pigs in southeastern China, but international and Hong Kong authorities said today that the Chinese government is providing little information about it, or about the contaminated wheat gluten that has caused deaths and illnesses in other animals.
The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potential global implications.
The Chinese government — and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, which is adjacent to Hong Kong — was criticized in 2003 for concealing information about the SARS virus for the first four months after it emerged in Foshan, 95 miles northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure.
But officials in Hong Kong as well as at the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, both agencies of the United Nations, said today that they been told almost nothing about the latest pig deaths, and been given limited details about wheat gluten contamination.
Because pigs can catch many of the same diseases as people, including bird flu, the two U.N. agencies maintain global networks to track and investigate unexplained patterns of pig deaths.
Hong Kong television broadcasts and newspapers were full of lurid accounts today of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. The Apple Daily newspaper said that as many as 80 percent of the pigs in the area had died, that panicky farmers were selling ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating in a river...
posted by jillosophy at 5/08/2007 01:39:00 PM
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