Breeders’ rights have been officially granted for Pinpu black swine and Yuansing cattle, marking a milestone in non-governmental breeding in Taiwan, the Ministry of Agriculture’s (MOA) Taiwan Livestock Research Institute said yesterday.
Pinpu black swine and Yuansing cattle were developed through participatory breeding, in which professional breeding knowledge and techniques were provided by the public sector for industry operators to breed livestock and poultry, institute Director-General Huang Jeng-fang (黃振芳) said.
Participatory breeding is a great example of public-private partnership, he said, adding that breeding stocks are crucial to ensuring consistent quality.
Photo courtesy of GGP Biotechnology Co
The Pinpu black pig was first bred by Pin-pu Farm Corp (春發成畜牧場) founder Lee Jung-chun (李榮春) in 2008.
Taiwanese black pigs had lost their original flavor due to generations of hybridization, but he found breeding stocks with stable quality through multiple genetic screenings, Lee said.
Pinpu black swine are four times sweeter than Iberian pigs and have 1.5 times more collagen, making their meat competitive enough to be exported to Hong Kong and the Philippines, he said.
Photo courtesy of Pin-pu Farm Corp
Institute Technical Services Division chief Yang Chen-jung (楊振榮) said that breeding stocks of Yuansing cattle are descendants of work cattle introduced from Japan during the colonial period.
The work cattle have distinctive genetic characteristics as they have been stocked in Yangmingshan (陽明山) since the Japanese government retreated and have not hybridized with other strains, he said.
In 2016, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) purchased all of the work cattle — including eight bulls and 11 cows — in a project to produce Japanese-style beef using cattle in Hualien County, Yang said.
Lee Teng-hui invited Japanese experts to examine the cattle and found that Yuansing cattle are genetically closer to wagyu — Japanese breeds of beef cattle — than cattle from the West, he added.
GGP Biotechnology Co (源興居生技) chairman Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英) said he had not known of Lee Teng-hui’s plan to breed the Japanese cattle until Lee asked him to invest in his breeding plan.
“I did not dare to stop him and would just do whatever he asked me to do,” he said.
Liu said he is a financial expert and did not know how to breed beef cattle, despite being born and raised in a farming family.
Liu took over the project when Lee Teng-hui, who had been diagnosed with cancer, entrusted it to him.
Liu continued to raise capital to increase his investments, which added up to NT$300 million (US$9.34 million), he said.
While more than 90 percent of domestic beef is imported, the fresh meat market looks like a promising market for Yuansing cattle, Liu said, adding that he aims to first increase the number of the cattle to meet market demand.
GGP Biotechnology general manager Chung Ti-ming (鍾迪名) said the company has commissioned small local farms to breed Yuansing cattle for consumption.
The goal is to breed 1,000 cattle within three years, with a long-term goal of 10,000 cattle, he said, adding that a Vietnamese firm with hundreds of hectares of farmland has expressed interest in the project.
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