250 THE BACON CURING INDUSTRY. 



an excellent type and very popular with the English curers, has failed to 

 " nick " — as the breeders' expression is — with the common Irish pig. The 

 Tam worth has also been tried and found wanting, while the Suffolk has been 

 rejected on account of its black colour and large proportion of fat to lean 

 meat ; and therefore the York at present holds the field. The cross 

 betw( n boars of this breed and native sows has been found most successful 

 both .rom the farmer's and the curer's point of view. It possesses a vigorous 

 constitution, is d capital feeder with a good digestion, a quick thriver, and 

 very prolific. It suits the curer because in it the more valuable cuts pre- 

 dominate, and the offal is light. It suits the feeder because it finishes 

 quickly and gives proportionately good weight for the amount of food it 

 consumes. Beyond what was done by the Bacon Curers' Association little 

 or no effort was made otherwise to encourage the breeding of the proper 

 class of pigs, compared with what has been done for horses, cattle, and 

 sheep. The labourer or cottager whose pig not alone represented his 

 largest investment in live stock, but also the foundation of the country's 

 bacon curing industry, was seldom if ever reached by the few prizes that 

 were offered at the annual shows of the Royal Dublin Society or at the 

 limited number of shows held irregularly in the provinces. For many years 

 prizes were aw^arded to pigs, not because they possessed the points looked 

 for in a good bacon pig, but because they were fatter than their competitors. 

 There was no Irish herd book ; and a pig with a pedigree was not thought 

 of except by the few well-to-do breeders who registered their pigs across 

 the Channel. In fact the quality of the products of the animal appears to 

 have been overlooked for its appearance and fatness. 



The herd book recently started by the Royal Dublin Society, and the 

 scheme of Service premiums now established by the Department of Agri- 

 culture, and explained in the scheme quoted above, are distinctly moves in 

 the right direction. Much care will, however, require to be taken that the 

 County Councils are not led by those who admire pigs of a particular breed, 

 and whose ambitions are to produce animals showing in the greatest per- 

 fection the points associated with this particular breed, regardless of the 

 great ultimate end of all pigs — pork and bacon. 



Each breed has its own advocates, but it is not too much to ask that the 

 judges in such an important matter should be those whose business is to 

 make the most money in the shortest time out of the animal alive, viz. — 

 the feeders, and those who are compelled to stand the brunt of a vigorous 

 competition in selling him when manufactured into bacon, viz. — the curers. 



Denmark, which has been Ireland's greatest competitor for the English 

 trade in bacon since 1887, has not been idle in the matter of improving its 

 swine. Up to the middle of the last century the same description might 

 be applied to the Danish as applied to the old Irish pig. It was hardy, but 

 ill-shaped, and very unthrifty. In 1887, when Germany prohibited the im- 

 portation of swine, and the raw products from swine, Denmark turned its 

 attention to the English bacon market. It imported, with State assistance, 

 specimens of the best English breeds of swine, and has succeeded in 

 changing the character of its swine as regards appearance and quality. It 

 has now about 100 breeding centres devoted to the breeding of the best 

 class of pig suitable for producing pork to be manufactured into the highest 

 class bacon, and raises more than double the number of swine it did twenty 

 years ago, the production increasing from 1,200,000 to 2,043,000 in five years. 

 It has now 25 co-operative slaughter-houses, which annually deal with from 



