JustRalph
02-02-2008, 09:18 PM
http://www.newsweek.com/id/107592
How long until the Pig Police get a handle on this? :lol:
A new breed of criminal has emerged in China: "pigjackers."
Soaring pork prices in the People's Republic have sent thieves roaring off with truckloads of hogs—and sometimes with smaller hauls, as was the case with the gang that was busted last year in Shenzhen trying to make off with 275 pounds of pork on a motorbike. A local newspaper valued the meat at upwards of $420, or roughly three times what a stolen motorbike might fetch in the city. Police easily caught the getaway bike; it couldn't handle all that weight.
The porcine crime wave is no joke to China's leaders. They see it as a sign of a much larger problem: even more than they worry about a repetition of Tiananmen Square, they dread the kind of mass unrest that could erupt out of a spike in pork prices. A full 65 percent of the country's total protein consumption is pork. The threat of a spontaneous uprising has been made worse by a freak blizzard that paralyzed central China last week—the region's worst in 50 years—stranding mobs of migrant workers on their way home for the Lunar New Year and disrupting shipments of the pig meat that is essential to holiday feasts. Food prices in general, and pork in particular, have been skyrocketing for months. Economic boom times are boosting demand even as the supply has plunged because of shrinking farmlands, rising grain prices and a "blue ear disease" epidemic that forced pig raisers to cull many thousands of hogs.
~more at the link~
http://www.newsweek.com/media/16/080201_PS20_wide-horizontal.jpg
How long until the Pig Police get a handle on this? :lol:
A new breed of criminal has emerged in China: "pigjackers."
Soaring pork prices in the People's Republic have sent thieves roaring off with truckloads of hogs—and sometimes with smaller hauls, as was the case with the gang that was busted last year in Shenzhen trying to make off with 275 pounds of pork on a motorbike. A local newspaper valued the meat at upwards of $420, or roughly three times what a stolen motorbike might fetch in the city. Police easily caught the getaway bike; it couldn't handle all that weight.
The porcine crime wave is no joke to China's leaders. They see it as a sign of a much larger problem: even more than they worry about a repetition of Tiananmen Square, they dread the kind of mass unrest that could erupt out of a spike in pork prices. A full 65 percent of the country's total protein consumption is pork. The threat of a spontaneous uprising has been made worse by a freak blizzard that paralyzed central China last week—the region's worst in 50 years—stranding mobs of migrant workers on their way home for the Lunar New Year and disrupting shipments of the pig meat that is essential to holiday feasts. Food prices in general, and pork in particular, have been skyrocketing for months. Economic boom times are boosting demand even as the supply has plunged because of shrinking farmlands, rising grain prices and a "blue ear disease" epidemic that forced pig raisers to cull many thousands of hogs.
~more at the link~
http://www.newsweek.com/media/16/080201_PS20_wide-horizontal.jpg