Pigs provide us with many different food products: bacon, ham, pork, sausages, black pudding, loin chops, pork pie, spam, indeed it is often said of the pig you can use everything but the OINK!
Watch the videos above which show
- Looking After Pregnant sows
- Sow farrowing – giving birth
- Piglets being weaned from their mother
- Bacon Pigs being weighed and how a butcher cuts up a pigs carcass
As a major sector in UK agriculture, the pig industry, unlike many other sectors, is not supported by state or European subsidy.
Throughout the 6,000 years of farming history, the pig has been invaluable.
Pigs where tradionally kept to consume waste products with many families having a pig ‘down the garden’ to eat any houshold leftovers, before being slaughtered to provide food itself. This practice is no longer allowed now, nor the feeding of ‘swill’ which is food waste from hospital and school kitchens for example, so pigs as the ultimate recycler are no more! Instead they are fed on specially processed and formulated diets predominantly made up of cereals and vegetable proteins (eg soya bean).