The central Chinese province of Henan, a leading farm production base, has imported 360 breeding pigs from the United States to improve the quality of pork, the provincial animal husbandry bureau said Thursday.

The herd of 60 boars and 300 sows will be raised at the Zhengyang County breeding farm, a national breeding stock facility run by the provincial animal husbandry bureau. The farm has spent 3 million yuan (about 440,000 U.S. dollars) to build air-conditioned piggeries.

Lai Dengming, the farm head, said the pigs were selected by three Chinese specialists. The animals were purchased from the three largest breeding swine farms in Indiana, Illinois and Nebraska.

Each pig was valued at 20,000 yuan (2,928 U.S. dollars) and all were offspring of prized breeding swine, according to Lai.

Given improving living standards and diets, Chinese consumers have come to prefer lean pork. Lai said he expected that the first litters of these pigs would be born in September and meat from these animals would start to be sold by next year.

Source: Xinhua