The Apple Daily newspaper said that up to 80 percent of the pigs had died in the area, that peasants were engaged in panic selling of ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating down a river.
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 potentially global implications. The Chinese government — and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, which is next to Hong Kong — was criticized in 2003 for concealing information about SARS when it emerged in Foshan, 95 miles northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure.
But officials in Hong Kong, at the World Health Organization and at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said Monday that they had been told almost nothing about the latest pig deaths and that they had been given limited details about the apparently unrelated problem of wheat gluten contamination, which has led to a massive pet food recall in the United States.
UPDATE
China says the outbreak was a result of 'blue ear disease'. Read more here.
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