It seems that the rainy season has finally officially ended in Ichinoseki City, Iwate Prefecture, this week. This year's rainy season felt like a proper rainy season for the first time in a long time, with an unusually large amount of rain. As someone who keeps animals, water shortages can be fatal, so I appreciate the rain, but on days when it rained too heavily, there was some damage, and I am constantly reminded of the difficulties of climate change.

Meanwhile, a pig farm introduced a new gene – a completely new breed of pig.

In pig farming, there are concepts like GGP and GP, which refer to parents that produce offspring, essentially grandparents to the piglets. We have introduced a new breed of pig at one farm using these pigs. Going forward, we will proceed with breeding these pigs, and once the parents are established, we will move on to breeding offspring. The pigs will finally begin to be shipped as meat pigs in about two years. *GGP: Grand Grand Parent, GP: Grand Parent

Introducing this new gene to achieve more stable production and higher quality pork is a big challenge for our company. Whenever we take on a challenge, there is always a mix of tension from the risk of failure and anticipation from the possibility of success, and that's exactly what we're experiencing now.

Together with our employees, we will work together to ensure the success of this initiative!

Tomoatsu Hashimoto

Here's what the pigs look like after being introduced ↓↓