Hello, China? Yes, Cancel Our Order ... For Everything

Is there anything coming out of China that's safe? Doesn't seem like it.

Today we discover they have a pig problem.

Blue ear disease spreading in pigs in China

20 August 2007 -- China has been hit by a highly infectious swine virus, which is bringing increases in pork prices and fears of a global pandemic among domesticated pigs.

So far the virus, believed to be an unusually deadly form of an infection known as blue-ear pig disease, has spread to 25 of this country's 33 provinces and regions.

The government in Beijing acknowledged that in the past year, the virus had decimated pig stocks in southern and coastal areas. But animal virus experts said that the Chinese authorities were playing down the gravity and spread of the outbreak, and had refused to cooperate with international scientists.

Experts said the virus was rapidly moving from the coasts to inland and the west, to areas such as Sichuan Province, China's largest pork producing region. The situation is grave because China consumes half the world's pork and considers pork its primary source of protein.

It is not known how many of the country's 500 million pigs have been infected by the virus. But the resulting pork shortage has helped fuel the strongest inflation in China in a decade, and even set off panic selling of pigs by farmers worried that they will suffer severe losses if their livestock contract the disease.

As noted, the ChiComs are trying to play this down. Good luck with that.

China brings blue-ear pig disease under "preliminary control"

Blue-ear pig disease has been brought under "preliminary control" through vaccinations and mass culls of infected pigs, Jia Youling, China''s chief veterinary officer, said on Monday.

More from the Wall Street Journal.

UPDATE: Now it's tainted jammies.

That's it.