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Unscrupulous traders dug up the day-old carcasses of diseased pigs and sold them for human consumption, a Chinese newspaper has reported.

 

The World Health Organisation has been puzzled by the extent and severity of an outbreak of streptococcus suis that has claimed the lives of 27 people among 131 infected in the cities of Ziyang and Neijiang, in the south-western province of Sichuan.

 

The bacterium is common in pigs and can cause sickness, but is rare in humans. Patients develop high fever, bleeding under the skin and toxic shock. The last big outbreak was in Jiangsu province seven years ago, when 14 people died.

 

The provincial capital's Chongqing Evening News has reported that police stumbled upon a trade in animals condemned as infected, slaughtered and buried.

 

Last Sunday they found a pig vendor, Chen Ping, with two dead pigs and a sick one on his tricycle. He had bought the pigs for a bargain 50 yuan ($8.15) each. He complied with a police order to bury the pigs, but the next day he dug them up and sold them in another town for 480 yuan each.

 

The newspaper said a large group of pig traders in the area were buying dead pigs and digging up carcasses for resale to butchers.

 

One patient infected with streptococcus suis, Chen Siyou, had helped his neighbour butcher a pig for eating that had died of sickness, a common practice in poverty-stricken rural areas.

 

Government laboratories are mass-producing a pig vaccine.

 

"We have the technology and procedures to bring the disease under control," a government spokesman said.

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