Pig carcass furore still raising worries, despite PR campaign
Public is still not convinced of reasons offered for mass deaths or promises water is safe to drink
It's been more than a fortnight since the appearance of thousands of pig carcasses floating down the Huangpu River through Shanghai grabbed headlines across the country.
Officials in China's largest city and in Jiaxing, the suspected source of the dead animals about 100km upstream, as well as the central government, have tried hard to calm the public by insisting there had been no major animal disease outbreak and that pork and water supplies were safe.
But questions about the exact source of the carcasses and who should be responsible continue to be raised by the media.
As of Tuesday, the Jiaxing city government had traced the source of 16 dead animals, from a sample of 17 pulled out of the river, from their ear tags and prosecuted their owners, People's Daily reported.
However, neither Shanghai nor Jiaxing seem to have plans to trace the remainder, which at last count totalled more than 16,000. And, despite being the main pig-raising region for Shanghai, Jiaxing insists that is not the sole source of the carcasses.
Jiaxing's explanation - that abnormally cold weather early in the year had made piglets, which constituted the bulk of the dead pigs, more prone to the common porcine circovirus, apparently failed to convince the media and the public.