There has been a widespread racket where pigs that had died from diseases in pig farms have been sold to slaughterhouses that produce pork in east China's Jiangxi province.

The slaughterhouses then cut the diseased pig corpses and sold the meat as packaged pork to different provinces in China.

The owner of a local pig farm, who remained anonymous, was quoted by China's Central Television as saying that buying and selling pigs that had died due to some disease has been going on for many years, and therefore it was an open secret to many in the industry.

Usually dead pigs are sold to dealers who offer the highest price, the owner says, adding such sales in 2013 reached 20 million yuan for his business.

A worker from the local slaughterhouse says that about 200 contaminated pigs are slaughtered each day and over 70,000 pigs for a year.

The dead pigs, which should have been disposed of under supervision, have been sold to the dealers for many years, even though some corpses carry the highly infectious foot-and-mouth disease, the report says.

The Ministry of Agriculture says inspection teams have been sent to Jiangxi to investigate the situation.