Hundreds of tons of dead pigs unearthed in Zhejiang raising concerns about pollu ...

Residents raise concerns about water, air pollution

Environmental inspectors recently discovered hundreds of tons of dead pigs which were buried in a remote mountain by a local disposal company in Huzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province in 2013, after local residents complained that corps had severally polluted surrounding water and air.

Over 200 tons of corps were buried in Dayin Mountain of Huzhou, Zhejiang in 2013, said the official Sina Weibo of the Information Office under Huzhou government on Sunday.

The Huzhou government has asked a qualified firm to dispose the rotten corps and tainted earth, 223.5 tons in total, and also launched an investigation into the pollution and hygiene distress in the area.

Five suspects related to the case have been detained, the Weibo post said.

Rotten pig corps wrapped in black plastic bags were first unearthed by a central environmental protection inspection team led by the Ministry of Environmental Protection on the afternoon of August 30, the Caijing magazine said on Sunday.

According to the Huzhou government, Huzhou Industrial and Medical Disposal Center buried those sick pigs in 2013 on direction of the then manager, Shi Zheng, who is in prison for another crime.

The Huzhou Industrial and Medical Disposal Center was also found to have violated rules and was fined 400,000 yuan ($61,750) for pollution in 2014, Caijing reported.

Meng Xuecan, the legal representative of the company, is also the head of Huzhou dead and sick animal disposal center, a company that had purchased about 470,000 dead pigs since 2013, said Caijing.

Local villagers have said they couldn't tolerate the deteriorating water and air quality caused by the buried pigs. Some dead pigs and other animals were found buried randomly and some were even thrown in the open space, Caijing said.

"If the pigs died of certain diseases or carried pathogens, these would permeate and poison the surrounding soil and water," Wang Shuyi, director of the Environment Law Research Institute at Wuhan University, told the Global Times.

Many similar cases have happened in China over the years, which is mainly due to the lack of government supervision, Wang said.

Nearly 6,000 dead pigs, drifted from Jiaxing, Zhejiang, were retrieved from Shanghai's Huangpu River in 2013, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Animals dead from unclear reasons and tested hazardous should be disposed through physical, chemical and biological methods, such as cremation and burial, to completely clear their pathogens, according to the Bio-safety Specifications on Sick Animal and Animal Product Disposal. Dead animals must be burned before being buried in a pit covered by 2-centimeter-quicklime at the depth of 1.5 meters, it said.