By 3pm Shanghai time, Sunday, another 495 dead pigs were fished out of Huangpu River according to local Shanghai newspaper website, Xinmin Evening News.
The total number recovered from the river over the last week is 9460.
The Huangpu’s 400-meter span divides the city into two areas and is the main source of Shanghai’s drinking water.
Earlier in the day, the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention claimed that test results came back negative for six types of virus after raw water going in and out of factories along the river was analyzed. The center added that water quality was stable.
The claim was quickly bombarded with angry blogs by local residents.
One blogger identified as Diaos Black found the results hard to believe. “How can the water quality be actually standard with more than 8000 dead pigs in it?” he wrote.
Some local residents conducted their own tests, publishing an unofficial report showing the water quality in Shanghai as heavily polluted. Drinking water in the city was known to be heavily chlorinated even before the dead pigs started surfacing.
On March 16, a day before the last batch of floating pigs were discovered, the Phoenix New Media website released a video showing reporters visiting Zhulin in Jiaxin city, an upstream village. The village is high on the suspect list as the source of the pig carcasses.
The former village chief Wenqin Wu in an interview with reporters said that out of 1375 families in the village, 906 were running pig farm businesses. He said in the past few years, most dead pigs were sold at meat markets through illegal channels.
He also said this year the number of dead pigs exceeded the village’s ability to process them.
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