FOR BRITISH MARKET

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIX, Issue 46, 9 February 1929, Page 7

FOR BRITISH MARKET

NEW ZEALAND'S NEWEST COMPETITOR.

The largest industrial and commercial concession which Bulgaria has recently given to a foreign company seems to be on the way to realisation. It is known as “the pig concession,” and involves the preparation of pork, bacon and mutton, as well as the exportation of eggs, grapes, apples, chickens, and many kinds of meats. The construction of plants in the city of Gorna Orechovitsa and in the Black Sea port of Varna has begun, and by next autumn an English company will begin to function. One of the first things that the company will have to do is to improve the variety of pigs in Bulgaria, so that they will be suitable for the production of the sort of bacon that is consumed in England. This will be accomplished, by the importation of German and Dutch breeds of pigs, ami since such improvement will re?uire some time, it will be three or oiir years before-much bacon is shipped from* Bulgaria. The Bulgarians themselves use but little bacon, preferring salt fat pork, which every village family prepares in the autumn.

Tlie native Bulgarian pigs are of a very hardy variety, long-nosed, razor-backed and aggressive. They are taken out to graze by village swineherds. These are mountainous districts where the pigs are left to forage for themselves in the woods for long periods; they grow almost as wild as wolves nnd are able to hold their own against all forest animals.