By John Ruwitch

YUNFU, China, May 18 (Reuters) - When some of her pigs stopped eating, it was Zhu Hongying's first sign that they were sick.

She called a veterinarian, who diagnosed them with a fever and administered injections. Exactly what medicine they were given, she did not say, but the jabs didn't help.

"The more shots they were given, the worse they got," Zhu said. "Their bodies turned black. About a week later, they died."

The local government culled and buried the remainder of her herd of 45, and with no compensation Zhu said her family was left to survive on an income from a fish pond, and wondering how they would repay a hefty debt incurred to initially buy the pigs.

Experts and industry sources say an epidemic of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), or blue ear disease, has gone on for more than a year, spread to various provinces and wiped out as many as a million pigs in China.

The Agriculture Ministry has made a nationwide plea for local governments to report new cases of the disease, which causes still-births, fever, loss of appetite, diarrhoea, redness of the skin and mortality rates of up to 50 percent on some farms.

The disease, which is common in pigs, costs the U.S. industry $600 million a year.

The only place the Chinese government has publicly acknowledged the latest outbreak is Yunfu in western Guangdong province, a 5-1/2-hour train and road trip from Hong Kong.

Officials say some 300 swine died in and around the collection of villages that make up the township of Silao, which is part of Yunfu.

However, a drive through the countryside lends credence to the belief that the official number of swine deaths is low.

Before the outbreak, many farmers, perhaps most, kept a pig or two on family plots, locals said. Many, like Zhu, kept litters that numbered in the dozens.

Not a single pig was seen in more than two hours in the area talking to farmers and feed sellers.

SEVERE SITUATION

"Every home around here used to raise a few pigs. Not now, though," said one local man.

On Thursday, Agriculture Minister Sun Zhengcai said the situation in general was severe, and labelled the illness "highly contagious". The disease does not affect people.

Government officials in Yunfu say the outbreak there is under control, but Zhu the pig farmer says people are still prohibited from keeping swine and others are sceptical.

For the time being, locals are coping by relying on other sources of income, like selling fish and ducks.

The Chinese are voracious consumers of pork and the Chinese word for meat "rou" is synonymous with pig meat.

Some said they received 10-20 yuan ($1.30-$2.60) per pig in compensation, but that's a fraction of the 700-800 yuan farmers say they could get at a market for a full-grown hog.

"Everybody's just losing money. It's that simple," said a man surnamed Liu who used to own several pigs, but now had none and was buying boxes full of yellow ducklings.

A man named Yao who was transporting bags of pig feed on a small trailer said his losses from the demise of his herd of some 50 hogs totalled about 20,000 yuan. Only two pigs remained, and one of them was sick, he said.

Food safety in China has come under scrutiny in recent weeks after melamine, used in making plastic and fertilizers, was blamed for killing pets after it was found in pet food ingredients exported from China.

Melamine scrap is widely mixed in animal feed in China to artificially boost the protein level, especially in soymeal, tricking feedlots and farmers into paying more for feed.

Industry officials, however, say melamine scrap was unlikely to be linked to the blue ear disease outbreak, dismissing talk the melamine lowers animals' immune systems. ($1 = 7.677 yuan)

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