Hybrid hogs

With African swine fever sending prices of pork beyond the reach of many consumers, maybe it’s time to consider alternative

sources of the meat. One potential option may be pygmy hogs, assuming such pig breed is commercialized.

Right now, the world’s smallest hog found in the wild in northeastern India is an endangered species. But a group of animal conservationists started breeding the Porcula salvania in captivity in 1996.

The Pygmy Hog Conservation Program now has 70 pigs, and a dozen of them were released into their traditional habitat in Assam’s Manas National Park bordering Bhutan two weeks ago. The release aims to boost the wild population estimated at only 250 heads. Last year, the program released 14 pygmy hogs into the same site.

In case pygmy hogs are commercially bred, their meat sizes are obviously small. One pygmy hog measures about 25 centimeters tall and 65 centimeters long. Each hog weighs around 8 to 9 kilograms.

Meanwhile, catching a stray wild boar should give one free pork. By chance there was one aboard a Hong Kong subway train last month. The staff of the train, however, failed to catch the elusive piglet that got onboard after slipping under the ticket barriers of Quarry Bay station on 18 June.

Officials said the pig alighted a few stops later and then boarded a second train that headed under Victoria Harbor. The train had to be diverted to a depot where officers from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department safely captured the animal. The boar was released back into the wild.

In Japan, those who prefer wild boar meat can get it by catching hybrid pigs. Reports said the hybrid hogs were the products of interbreeding between domestic pigs that escaped from farms and wild boars roaming in abandoned towns in Fukushima.

However, people who are starting to live in parts of the said town should be properly advised when consuming pork from hybrid hogs. They have to eat the radioactive pigs at their own risk.

Based on a study of radiocesium contamination of wild boars captured within 20 kilometers of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and published in Scientific Reports on 9 June 2020, meat from most of the studied boars contain the radioactive chemical in amounts exceeding the regulatory limit eight to nine years after the facility was damaged by a powerful earthquake and released radioactive cesium into the environment.