BEIJING, May 9 (Reuters) - China issued draft rules for pig slaughterhouses to protect people's health and pork products' quality, the Ministry of Commerce said on its Web site on Wednesday. The rules come the same day China pledged to clean up its food industry, after worldwide concerns about possible contamination of food exports following the death of some animals in the United States from pet food. Slaughterhouses must be licensed and approved by local governments and environmental bureaux, and must be located away from drinking water supplies, residential districts and public areas. Slaughterhouses must not inject water or other artificial substances to add weight to the meat, the rules said. They must have proper meat storage and transport as well as waste disposal sites and equipment. The central government has on occasion closed live markets to prevent the spread of animal-borne diseases to humans, particularly during outbreaks of bird flu. In the summer of 2005, Streptococcus suis bacteria, contracted from slaughtering, handling or eating infected pigs, was linked to the deaths of nearly 40 people in the southwestern province of Sichuan, the centre of China's pork industry. Concerns have been growing about China's food industry, where the temptation to cut corners by unregulated companies operating on thin margins has outpaced the ability of regulatory agencies to enforce standards. In the latest case, 16 pet deaths in the United States have been linked to two Chinese firms' exports of wheat gluten and rice protein that contained melamine scrap, a chemical product that artificially raises the protein level of feed. Industry officials said on Wednesday melamine scrap was unlikely to be linked to the unusually serious outbreak of PRRS, or blue ear disease, among pigs in China. About one million pigs have died from a variation of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome virus in an outbreak that began in May last year. The virus is unlikely to spread to humans, leading veterinarians said on Wednesday. The disease causes stillbirths in pigs, fever, loss of appetite, diarrhoea and redness of the skin and high mortality rates. The ears of the affected pigs turn temporarily blue. "The worst case is that they mix the melamine scrap, of which some elements could be poisonous to the animals," said Wang Ruojun, who teaches animal nutrition at the College of Animal Science and Technology of the China Agricultural University. China has not published figures for how many pigs had died from the disease, and the Agriculture Ministry has declined to comment on many occasions. "It was blue ear disease, but the disease was caused by a virus, nothing related to melamine," said Chen Xizhao, an expert with the agricultural ministry's disease control centre. (Reporting by Lucy Hornby and Niu Shuping, editing by David Fogarty; lucy.hornby@reuters.com; Reuters Messaging: lucy.hornby.reuters.com@reuters.net; +86 10 6598-1269))
