These Homely Hogs Have Some Appeal

Chinese pigs may not have a future on U.S. dinner tables, but their genes could help make U.S. sows more prolific parents and their offspring more disease-resistant, an Iowa researcher says.

The Chinese hogs, which look like animals dressed in ill-fitting pig suits, are described by Iowa State University as “the cute, the ugly and the wrinkly.”

But it’s not their homely appearance or slow growth rate that interests the pork trade. And it certainly is not the gross obesity of the Chinese swine at a time when breeders are concentrating on leaner hogs and marketing pork as “the other white meat.”

It is that Chinese pigs produce bigger litters than American breeds and the piglets appear to be resistant to a common form of baby pig diarrhea, Iowa State University researchers say.

“In the food chain they’re not going to have a place, but there are certainly characteristics we may want to get out of them,” said Palmer Holden, a university swine specialist.

In 1989, after years of negotiations, China shipped 140 pigs to the United States. Forty-seven wound up at Iowa State University in Ames, with the rest going to the University of Illinois at Urbana, Ill., and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s meat animal research center at Clay Center, Neb.

Iowa State University received male and female Meishan breeds and only male Fengjing and Minzhu breeds from China.

The first litters averaged 11.5 pigs per sow, and the second litter averaged 12.8 pigs. Mature Chinese sows average 15 or more pigs per litter and litters of up to 40 are possible, researchers say.

U.S. breeds average closer to 10 piglets a litter.

“In two years we’re going to have more pigs than we know what to do with,” Holden said.

But Holden and other researchers are grateful for the pigs, hoping to isolate the genes responsible for litter size and disease immunity and crossbreed for those traits.

But these pigs aren’t destined for the dinner table in a health-conscious society. While good U.S. pork going to market averages less than one inch of back fat, the Chinese pigs have an estimated two to three inches of back fat.

“There’s just no demand for fat anymore,” Holden said.