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Profiting from the piggy gene bank
These little piggies will be going to market thanks to British breeding stock.
A Yorkshire company have been developing a prolific new breed from sows, originally imported from China over 20 years ago. Paradoxically, the Asian genes have now been sent back, although to Thailand and the Philippines this time.
Established in the early 1990s by Stephen Curtis, ACMC has some extensive use of modern technology and IT to breed a particularly prolific female through applied genetics.
The company developed an entirely new breed of pig – the Meidam – from the Chinese Meishan, which was imported into Europe more than two decades ago. The Meidam sow can produce up to 30 pigs a year.
ACMC has now set up breeding units in Thailand and the Philippines to avoid continually having to send stock from the UK. The herds will produce breeding stock under licensing arrangements and operations will be managed from the UK by a software package called PigCom.
Stephen said: “We intend to become a serious supplier of genetically improved breeding stock to the region. We received help from the UK Trade & Investment team, at the British Embassy in Bangkok, who introduced us to key government and commercial contacts in Thailand”.
Article published in UKTI’s “Overseas Trade Magazine” – April 2007
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