Swine fever? 62 piglets found in back of car slaughtered by Chinese authorities over lack of licence
- Owners were driving their porcine passengers to their hometown to sell them
- China has been battling an outbreak of swine fever since August – but Weibo users ask why the piglets were not given a health check
Agriculture officials seized and slaughtered more than 60 piglets at a highway police checkpoint in eastern China after the animals were found being illegally transported in the back of a car.
The two men in the vehicle, surnamed Li and Wu, did not have permits to raise or transport livestock and were stopped at a checkpoint with the 62 animals in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, last Thursday.
They had bought the piglets in Nantong in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, and planned to transport them back to their hometown in central Hunan province to sell them, the Yangtse Evening Post reported.
The pair drove at night to evade detection, but the overloaded car and the squeals of the piglets gave them away, according to the report.
On finding the piglets in the back, highway patrol police contacted Nanjing’s Centre for Animal Disease Control and Prevention.
“You don’t have any of the [required permits],” a member of staff from the centre told the men in a report aired by Jiangsu TV on Sunday. “According to the latest rules from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, we need to slaughter your pigs on the spot.”
To legally transport the piglets, Li and Wu needed to have a permit for raising the livestock, a certificate stating that the piglets were healthy, and a business licence, according to the Jiangsu TV report.
China has been struggling to contain an outbreak of swine fever, which has spread to all provinces except Tibet and Qinghai since the first reported case last August. The disease is not dangerous to humans but is deadly for pigs.
Some users of Chinese social media site Weibo sympathised with Li and Wu, suggesting that killing the piglets was an overreaction.
“No health check before the slaughter?” one person wrote. “If the guys didn’t need the money, why would they have bought this many pigs? They lost a lot.”
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Another said: “Can they be more humane in carrying out the law, like testing for diseases first, or levy fines? Money doesn’t fall from the sky. I feel sorry for the piglets and even more for their owners.”
“Why do you need this many licences to buy pigs?” one person asked.
Others’ thoughts were solely with the piglets. “Why did they kill the 62 pigs? It’s not as if they wanted to get in the car,” one Weibo user wrote. “What fault did the pigs have?”
