Dead Pigs in River [GRAPHIC PHOTOS]: Thousands of Slain Swine Found in Shanghai River Drinking Water Supply, Raises Health Concerns

Reports from China confirm that over 2,800 dead, decomposing pigs were found floating in Shanghai's popular Huangpu River - a source of drinking water for some of the city's 23 million inhabitants. The nearly 3,000 slain swine have since been pulled from the waters, but it still remains a mystery as to how they got there. Although authorities insist that there's currently no health risk involved in drinking the contaminated water, this incident again raises concerns over the toxic state of several Chinese natural environments, especially in regards to rivers.

It remains unknown as to how so many thousand pigs got in the river, and exactly why and how they were killed. Several local media reports suggest that the animals were probably dumped by an immoral farmer from the neighboring province of Zhejiang.

The dead pigs were first discovered on Thursday (March 7) - the murky Huangpu River was finally cleared of all corpses on Monday (March 11).

Authorities ran tests of the Huangpu waters and found no trace of foot and mouth disease, blue-ear pig disease, or swine fever. They did, however, detect traces of porcine circovirus, a disease that affects pigs but is not believed to infect humans.

"We have to act quickly to remove them all for fear of causing water pollution," Xu Rong, the environmental chief in Shanghai's Songjiang district, told China's Global Times when the pigs were first discovered. "So far, water quality has not been affected but we have to remove the pigs as quickly as possible and can't let their bodies rot in the water."

The incident has since been deemed "Hogwash" - and according to several members of the river cleanup team, they had "never, ever" encountered so many dead pigs before.

China's vice-minister for water resources Hu Siyi admitted last year that 20 percent of the country's rivers were "too toxic for human contact" while 40 percent were severely polluted. And according to locals, this isn't the first time the upper side of the river has suffered a swine invasion:

"We had dead pigs here last year too," 66-year-old Dong Aifang, who lives along the river, explained to the Telegraph, "We seem to have dead pigs all the time. It is non-stop. I am worried about the drinking water... It really, really stinks."