Pigs’ Captive Audience

MEINERS OAKS —  While President Clinton practiced diplomacy in China on matters of state this week, a group of Chinese agricultural specialists was on a quieter mission here--on matters of pig farming.

Officials of the county’s Honor Farm--which houses 270 county inmates--welcomed eight Shanghai agricultural experts Thursday morning to what the Pork Producers’ Assn. of California calls the Southland’s premier pig farm.

The mission appeared to be a success.

“I think you are as knowledgeable about pigs as about prisoners,” Zhao Ziqin of the Shanghai animal husbandry office told Sgt. Steve Cook, who oversees the farm’s pig-raising operation, eliciting a round of laughter. That and other remarks in English and Mandarin Chinese were interpreted by Christina Tung of the Sino-U.S. Technology and Cultural Exchange.

The Honor Farm’s pig-breeding operation, which feeds the 270 inmates and is run by 30 of them, is the single California stop on the Chinese experts’ two-week itinerary. It produces half a million pounds of pork a year, some of which also feeds youngsters incarcerated at the county’s Juvenile Hall.

“I think they came here because we’re the biggest pork producer in Southern California--we have 1,800 pigs here,” Cook said.

The group’s next destination is Florida, where the Chinese will study the green plums the state produces “for use in medicine,” said Jun Wang, another member of the Sino-U.S. Technology Exchange.

After Florida, the eight specialists and academics will head to upstate New York to study farming techniques before flying back to Shanghai.

On arrival in Meiners Oaks, the Chinese, who had been in the United States a mere 24 hours, first sat down to a round-table discussion about pig production with swine expert Cook.

The conversation quickly became studded with such terms as brood sows, litter count, slaughter rates and the advantages of cross-breeding boars with crossed sows.

The Shanghai white pig is the pig of choice in Shanghai, while boars bred with crossed sows are favored in Ojai.

“The whole thing with pigs now is genetics--to produce a longer, leaner pig,” Cook told his guests.

When the group headed from the Honor Farm’s administration building to the pig farming operation, they donned white lab coats and plastic knee boots, “just in case.”

In the brood house, the Chinese watched half a dozen 265-pound brood sows each nurse a baker’s dozen of squealing piglets.

“Very big pigs,” commented Fu Deming, director of the Shanghai Hangton Pig Breeding Stock Farm. Deming said that Shanghai pigs are usually slaughtered at 200 pounds “for leaner pork.”

Cook told Deming that leaner pork also was his goal, “with less than an inch of back fat on them.”

Through interpreter Tung, Deming nodded in agreement.

The two swine specialists also agreed that “our litter sizes are very comparable right now.”

After a final stop at the on-site slaughterhouse, which was pronounced very clean, group members doffed their lab coats and boots, then continued their conversation about brood sows over lunch in the dining room.

Perhaps pork chops were on the menu.