China's taste for pork serves up a pollution problem

Fan Jianjun points to a concrete pipe jutting from the lake bank. Sludge spews from its mouth and arcs across the water, the surface bubbling with the bodies of flies.

Fan has lived in Houtonglong village all his 31 years. The water was clear, he says, before the pig farm was built and people's health began to suffer.

No one consulted the villagers before Shengtai pig farm was built 100 metres from their homes. The farm produces 10,000 animals a year – a relatively small concern in the world of industrialised farming – but there is so much waste to dispose of, the village air is thick with the stench.