Local govt in touch with farmer over death of pigs

The government of Daluomi township is actively communicating with the farmer whose pigs were killed due to a sudden power outage at a pig farm in the town's Daluomi village to minimize the the farmer's losses, according to a statement by the agriculture and rural bureau of Fangzheng county in Heilongjiang province on Friday.

According to the statement, after receiving a report to repair power outage at 11:32 pm on Saturday, the power supply station immediately conducted a full inspection of the 74.3-kilometer-long Xianghe Line and discovered that dead branches had blown onto the wire, causing a short circuit.

The power supply was restored at 4:57 am on Sunday after emergency repair.

On Sunday morning, the owner of the pig farm reported that during the power outage, the ventilator of the farm could not work normally, resulting in poor ventilation in the farm, and some pigs died of asphyxia due to lack of oxygen.

"The power outage caused the temperature of the farm to rise to more than 60 C, and 462 pigs died, resulting in a direct economic loss of about 1 million yuan ($140,169)," the farm's owner said in a short video released on a social platform on Monday.

After receiving the report, the town government immediately asked a professional company to incinerate the pigs and ensure no dead animals entered the markets, the statement said.

The laboratory of animal disease prevention and control center of the county's bureau of agriculture and rural affairs sampled live pigs and the environment at the farm, and the test results ruled out the possibility of the pigs' death due to disease.

So far, normal production of the farm has resumed, the statement said.