Originally from: Farmtalking
                        
Press Release From –

British Pig Association
Scotsbridge House
Scots Hill
Rickmansworth
Herts
WD3 3BB

Telephone: 01923 695295
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Website: http://www.britishpigs.org

Largest ever shipment of rare breed pigs goes to Bhutan.

72 British Saddleback and Large Black pigs are on their way to Bhutan, the isolated mountain kingdom in the Himalayas. The shipment, which also includes 10 Durocs is being paid for by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. It will form the nucleus of a pig breeding programme to provide improved breeding stock for local small farmers. Coloured pigs are favoured throughout this part of the world.

The shipment is the culmination of more than 12 months' work by the British Pig Association (BPA) to put together a foundation breeding herd for export. Dr Rex Walters, the BPA consultant geneticist, has been involved in organising the pigs into unrelated breeding families. With the small sow populations of these breeds it has not been easy to find enough unrelated lines. The British Saddleback and Large Black breeds are both listed as rare breeds with less than 500 sows each.

The pigs have been selected from 20 different herds and were brought to an assembly point in Somerset before travelling on to Heathrow to begin the long journey to Bhutan. Tim Harris of Harris Associates will travel with the pigs. Speaking on Saturday at the assembly point he admitted that organising this shipment had been a considerable challenge. "The shipments of traditional breed pigs I have handled up to now were much smaller and only involved a few pigs" he said. "Arranging the freight for these pigs has been very difficult. Not many aircraft can fly into Bhutan because of the altitude and so we will have to transfer into a much smaller aircraft when we get to Bangkok. The crates have been specially designed so that they can be rebuilt into single pig boxes to be carried up the stairs of the smaller plane."

Marcus Bates, Chief Executive of the British Pig Association, said "this is very good news for these breeds as some of the money from this shipment will be used for breed conservation projects here in the UK such as our Traditional Breeds AI Scheme."