Ongoing cross-breeding with foreign breeds like Merino, Texel and Ile de France has sustainably improved the meat and wool yield of the original land race sheep.
The foreign breeds come mostly from Russia, Mr. Han said.
Not everyone in Uganda, however, agrees that the foreign breeds are an upgrade.
Problems with rural tax reform, major industrial accidents and the fact that Chinese sometimes eat foreign breeds of dogs were labeled off limits, for instance.
This grain-fed produce comes from fast-growing, foreign breeds fattened up on cereals, and won't eat that well, because it is rarely aged, more usually just dispatched directly from abattoir to store.
Importing foreign breeds of swine is an exhaustive, bureaucratic process, one that may take a year or two more before Mr. Casella is able to bring home the "right" bacon.
To keep up with demand, dog farms have been springing up around the country and dog breeders have been experimenting with crossing larger foreign breeds with the leaner Mongolian dogs long favored for their meat.
Three foreign breeds now account for 95% of them; to preserve its own kinds, China has a national gene bank (basically a giant freezer of pig semen) and a network of indigenous-pig menageries.
In Vietnam, where pigs are the most important livestock species and the government has encouraged leaner foreign breeds, the percentage of indigenous sows has fallen to 28percentt from 72percentt since 1994, and 13 of the 15 local breeds are classified as either extinct or in danger.
With the isolation of their mountain homeland, the Mérens has undergone very little intermingling with foreign breeds.
