China’s dead pig crisis seems to have spread to another species as Chinese state media carried a report saying 1,000 rotten dead ducks had been found in a river in southwest China while the toll of dead pigs removed from Shanghai’s water supply hit nearly 11,000.
News of the latest dead animal flotilla comes from Pengshan county in China’s Sichuan province, where a local government official told state radio at the weekend that partially decomposed ducks had been found in 50 to 60 woven plastic bags floating in the Nanhe river.
Like the Shanghai authorities, he said the ducks posed no danger to the local water supply. And like the dead pigs that have been found floating in Shanghai’s Huangpu river over the past fortnight, the cause of death of the ducks remains unknown.