HONG KONG, May 7 — A mysterious epidemic is killing pigs in southeastern China, but international and Hong Kong authorities said Monday that the Chinese government was providing little information about it or the contaminated wheat gluten that has caused death and illness in pets in the United States.
The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potentially global implications.
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Because pigs can catch many of the same diseases as people, including bird flu, the W.H.O. and F.A.O. maintain global networks to track and investigate unexplained patterns of pig deaths.
Hong Kong television and newspapers were full of lurid accounts on Monday 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 up to 80 percent of the pigs had died in the area, that peasants were engaged in panic selling of ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating down a river.
The disease reportedly started killing pigs after Chinese New Year celebrations in February, but is now spreading. The state-controlled news media in China have had a few reports on the wheat gluten problem and almost nothing on the pig deaths.
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