Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Mysterious Pig Deaths In China

Mysterious Pig Deaths In China

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This most likely has everything to do with melamine, the toxic coal byproduct that Chinese firms have begun using to falsify the protein content in wheat gluten for animal feed. However the Chinese are notoriously opaque about internal health issues (think SARS), so the truth is not about to jump up and declare itself.

Unless you’re the IOC, a bigger concern than an out-of-control Chinese ag sector is the possibility of an infectious agent. Pigs are biologically similar enough to us that surgeons use pig cadavers as a standard for surgical practice, which explains why pig epidemics have a funny way of becoming human epidemics. In any case this story merits keeping an eye on.

Reader Interactions

28Comments

  1. 1.

    ThymeZone

    (1) What keeps the adulterated ingredients from getting into the human food supply chain, and …

    (2) To what extent is FDA on top of this, and capable of providing proper oversight and enforcement, either for animal, or human, food products?

  2. 2.

    Jackmormon

    Hong Kong television broadcasts and newspapers were full of lurid accounts today of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. The Apple Daily newspaper said that as many as 80 percent of the pigs in the area had died, that panicky farmers were selling ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating in a river.

    [Shudder].

  3. 3.

    chopper

    all the bees in america left for china and are stinging pigs left and right.

    or, the porcine version of the rapture.

  4. 4.

    Pb

    What keeps the adulterated ingredients from getting into the human food supply chain

    With the Bush FDA? You mean, besides prayer?

    To what extent is FDA on top of this, and capable of providing proper oversight and enforcement, either for animal, or human, food products?

    You’re kidding, right?

    And incidentally, dear FDA, if it’s so freaking safe, then what the hell happened to this woman, hmm?

    An Ottawa woman is recovering after becoming violently ill after eating some of her dog’s food, in a case likely related to the tainted pet food that has killed several dogs and cats and sickened dozens more across North America.

  5. 5.

    Punchy

    When a country as large as China tries to play Industrial Catch-up in about a 20-year span–when it took most 1st world nations a hundred years or so–you’re bound to have their problems with rampant and massive pollution (rivers), animal extinctions (see dolphins), energy crises (see Iran support, and some just wicked large damn they built), etc.

    They’re basically trying to become equivalent to America and Europe in a fifth of the necessary time. Expect many more ecological and epidemiological catastrophies.

  6. 6.

    Dreggas

    Have to do it….

    were they….capitalist pigs?

    In that case the government probably believed they had it coming.

    As for the manner of their deaths…man that sounds just hideous. Hopefully whatever they have doesn’t spread. Of course I am probably not the only one to see a direct correlation between the population density of people and animals there and the rise in the number of nasty diseases and viruses coming out of that part of the world.

    Being such great “global citizens” as we have seen with SARS and bird flu (HA HA) we know we can count on our Chinese friends to keep the world abreast of any more nasty diseases…

  7. 7.

    Zifnab

    I expect China will learn fast enough the value of a CDC and an FDA. We didn’t create those out of some capitalist luxury or fickle whim. As crazy as it sounds, keeping your citizens from dieing of food poisoning and disease is actually beneficial to your economy and your political life-expectancy.

  8. 8.

    Punchy

    An Ottawa woman is recovering after becoming violently ill after eating some of her dog’s food

    Hmmmm…..anyone heard from Krista lately?

  9. 9.

    Jimmmm

    I think it’s kewl that US corporations are offshoring the production of food from American raw materials. ‘Bout time we took advantage of those widely-regarded safety and sanitation standards for which China and Mexico are famous.

  10. 10.

    Pb

    Hmmmm…..anyone heard from Krista lately?

    Uh-oh. In Canada, all they have is the F.D.Eh?

  11. 11.

    sidereal

    Stop whining, moonbats. The FDA is no doubt doing a heckuva job under whichever horseracing judge has been rewarded with that plum assignment.

  12. 12.

    Dug Jay

    Did anyone else notice how much Congressman Henry Waxman of California looks a lot like a pig, a pig with a mustache, that is?

    I wonder if it could have anything to do with his well known love of Chinese food.

  13. 13.

    Punchy

    Did anyone else notice how much Congressman Henry Waxman of California looks a lot like a pig

    Maybe pigs have evolved to look just like Rep. Waxman, but missed the mousache part.

    Fucktard.

  14. 14.

    Dreggas

    Dug Jay Says:

    Did anyone else notice how much Congressman Henry Waxman of California looks a lot like a pig, a pig with a mustache, that is?

    I wonder if it could have anything to do with his well known love of Chinese food.

    The only one who could take pig deaths in china and somehow tie it to a criticism of Democrats…

  15. 15.

    Rome Again

    I would like to remind those Rapture Christians that if you’re seeing this sort of thing now, chances are you probably missed the boat (if there ever was one, which is highly unlikely).

  16. 16.

    Rome Again

    The only one who could take pig deaths in china…

    The only one what? Spoof? Nah. I bet if Duggy hadn’t thought of it, someone would eventually.

    By the way Duggy, I expect you ended up with the perfect face and have no regrets about your own looks? Not like you can control the shape of your nose, without surgery I mean.

  17. 17.

    The Other Steve

    With the Bush FDA? You mean, besides prayer?

    Ahh, Faith Based Food Safety.

  18. 18.

    Dreggas

    Rome Again Says:

    I would like to remind those Rapture Christians that if you’re seeing this sort of thing now, chances are you probably missed the boat (if there ever was one, which is highly unlikely).

    We should make a sign vis-a-vis the rapture saying “If you see plagues….you missed it.”

    Of course right now the fundies are probably in near ecstacy as they watch those nasty storms pounding the midwest and elsewhere since to them it’s not a result of climate change but the impending Rapture…

  19. 19.

    jake

    Clearly these ovine fatalities are the result of terrorist activity in China and we must invade immediately to help our brethren in China. Then we can charge them for the costs associated with the invasion because that works really well. Of course, we are a little strapped for cash right now and China is unlikely to loan us cash to invade their country (people can be soooo unreasonable that way).

    Hmmm. I wonder if there are any organizations that need to buy a lot of weapons right now…?

  22. 22.

    Pb

    Of course right now the fundies are probably in near ecstacy as they watch

    Why speculate, when you can just check instead–ah, who am I kidding, of course they are.

  23. 23.

    HyperIon

    Wrt the difference in drug and food safety:

    Major drug companies monitor some/many/all inputs to their process stream in real time. However, this approach has not yet trickled down to the idiot brother in the FDA–that would be Food.

    The food industries are very weak in their application of sophisticated instrumental analysis techniques. It’s shocking to see minimal chemistry requirements for Food Science majors. As time goes by I’m sure this will change. And admittedly, the input streams for manufacturing drugs are MUCH simpler that the inputs for manufacturing foods. The food folks have hard problems but do not yet possess sufficient technical knowledge to solve them.

    It is possible to monitor the (chromatographic/spectroscopic) profile of the process inputs over a long interval and successfully model that profile; some gasoline refiners do this routinely. Then when the input stream changes (maybe because something new is in it), the model can detect this difference.

    Unfortunately most of the food QC folks with chem backgrounds are stuck in the “old world” where exhaustive analysis is the rule. I saw where someone at a pet food company using the tainted feedstock from China said basically: we couldn’t detect that component because we do not analyze for it. Which is a reasonable response if no technologiy existed to monitor profiles and automatically detect deviations from “normal”.

    A good illustration of:
    In theory, theory and practice are the same.
    If practice, they are not.

  25. 25.

    demimondian

    Man, do YOU have the wrong animal.

    I’m hoping that he feels kind of sheepish.

  26. 26.

    mrmobi

    Somewhat OT, but I thought this was excellent, from Rick Perlstein’s blog:

    You’d think you could escape their ravages by moving to a bucolic town way out in the remote California mountains. You’d be wrong. “Lake of the Woods residents are being told not to drink tap water without boiling it first after E. coli bacteria was detected Thursday in the mountain community’s water supply.”

    The water company’s office manager: “Never in 28 years has this happened.”

    And why might it be happening now? The operative theory is that the contamination came from a broken pipe or septic tank.

    Did I mention that broken pipes and septic tanks are a national crisis? That the nation’s civic engineers have given our wastewater infrastructure a D-minus? That this is what happens in a nation that pretends there is civic virtue in tax cuts?

    Grover Norquist, meet Lake of the Woods Wade Biery. And avoid confronting him in a back alley. Biery’s is worried his eight-months-pregnant wife might have ingested some of the poisoned water. “There’s part of me that’s ready to go down there and lop somebody’s head off.”

    Of course, it is completely unfair to blame the current administration in Washington for these infrastructure problems. They are just doing their part in helping the bottled water industry. Mission accomplished. God bless you, Mr. Norquist, now we can use some of that tax money you’ve saved us to go to the emergency room. What a guy!

  27. 27.

    MNPundit

    Please don’t let it be H5N1, Please don’t let it be H5N1. I’m not old enough yet to survive the cytokeine storm, I need 6 more years!

  28. 28.

    BIRDZILLA

    Hey wheres PETA why are they not over there saving those little piggies from dying? Maybe its becuase those piggies are to be eaten and we all know how they get the noses bent over this

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