Britain’s classic pig breeds in danger as pork industry shrinks

High production costs for farmers lead to ‘worrying and worsening’ decline in new births

Though they grace the pictures of children’s books and appear in nursery rhymes, the UK’s traditional pig breeds are at risk of dying out.

With the pig market failure causing a shrinkage of the British pork industry, owing to farmers being offered less than the cost of production for their products, the UK pig population has fallen from about 8 million in the 1990s to just over 5 million today.