At a Japanese government laboratory on the outskirts of Tokyo, designer pigs are cosseted away from dirty humans.
Visitors to the livestock experiment station scrub with soap and wriggle into sterilized suits to ensure that Japan's most pampered porkers are cocooned from nasty germs.
Only then can they enter the spotless sties of "Tokyo X," hybrid hogs developed by the Tokyo government in a bid to create the perfect pork chop.
PHOTO: AP
When these piggies go to market, their richly marbled meat fetches 50 percent more than ordinary pork -- a sow-sized premium given Japan's long stagnant economy.
But in a country reeling from a spate of health scares and scandals that have eroded confidence in food safety, many shoppers are happy to pay more for quality meat.
"Ever since mad cow disease broke out last year, consumers have been extra safety-conscious," said Hisayuki Goda, director of stock-breeding at the Tokyo Metropolitan Livestock Experimentation Station (TMLES).
"It's our mission to meet their needs."
These hogs may oink and squeal like ordinary pigs, but the similarities stop there.
Cross-bred from three bloodlines -- the American Duroc, British Berkshire and Beijing black pig -- they sport dashing coats, some jet black, others orange-brown with black spots.
Sensitive souls, they need plenty of living space to thrive. And they are finicky eaters, dining twice a day on barley-rich feed that is free of animal proteins and genetically modified organisms.
"What we don't do is give them beer or let them listen to music," said former TMLES President Isao Hyodo, who did much of the grunt work in developing Tokyo X.
Possibly the only Japanese livestock with a more luxurious life are cows who produce the famously expensive Kobe beef. Their farmers are known for treating them with beer and relaxing music in a bid to make the meat more tender.
Producing upwards of 70 kg of meat, the pigs' flesh is high in intramuscular fat, making it tender and succulent -- a major selling point in Japan, where texture is rated as highly as taste.
BRAND-NAME PORKER
The 120 million yen (US$973,700) project to breed an elite pig was aimed initially at helping local hog-raisers weather a flood of cheap imports from China.
Farmers who agree to abide by TMLES's strict standards can buy a few of the pigs from the experiment station and start breeding Tokyo X themselves.
"If the region's small-scale pig farmers were going to survive, we had to create pork that could be sold at a high price," Goda said.
"We knew there was demand for meat that was both super tasty and safe, so we decided to develop a brand-name pig."
That strategy makes sense in a country where high-end goods such as designer handbags still fly off the shelves despite a plunge in overall private spending that is choking the economy.
Many vegetable farmers have taken a similar tack, adopting less efficient organic methods so they can charge double for their chemical-free produce.
Sales of non-conventional farm goods have boomed since the outbreak of mad cow disease in September 2001 and a string of mislabelling scandals that have undermined faith in the country's big food companies.
Five cases of mad cow disease have come to light, battering earnings of restaurants and meat packers. The scourge has been linked to variant Creutzfelt-Jakob disease, which has killed about 125 people worldwide but none in Japan.
In a recent poll by the Yomiuri Shimbun daily, 87 percent of respondents said they "felt worried about food safety," while half said they didn't trust food labels.
"After mad cow, a lot of people are talking about the traceability of beef, for example," Tokyo government official Ken Suzuki said. "With Tokyo X pork, traceability is guaranteed."
`LIVING DIAMONDS'
Farmer Yasuto Sawai turned to Tokyo X as a way of preserving a way of life that stretches back 12 generations.
Sawai's ancestors have been growing rice and vegetables in Takatsuki, near Tokyo, for about 400 years. But fierce competition at home and abroad had put that legacy at risk.
"See the paddies on all sides?" Sawai, 42, said. "Where else around Tokyo can you see scenes like this? But paddies don't bring in money. So I decided to do something creative: value-added agriculture."
In summer, Sawai releases dozens of ducks into the flooded fields that surround his graceful wooden farmhouse. The birds eat weeds and insects and provide manure, allowing him to forsake chemicals and sell his crops as organic.
But the real money is in the sties. Sawai currently has 150 Tokyo X hogs, housed in roomy enclosures alongside 100 or so ordinary white pigs in more claustrophobic quarters.
While conditions may not match the hermetic hygiene of TMLES, the multicolored hogs are free to wallow in relative comfort.
He calls them his "living diamonds" because of the cash they bring in. Sales from the pork -- about 20 million yen (US$162,300) a year -- are double those of all his other farm products combined.
"They're not easy to breed," Sawai said. "In the beginning there were lots of problems -- some pigs died. They're very delicate."
About 20 farms in Tokyo and other areas currently raise the pigs, producing 5,000 a year.
TMLES expects that number to double by 2005 as more supermarkets and restaurants start stocking the brand. Almost 200 stores currently sell Tokyo X.
Simple economics may lead the charge. Only three percent of farmers in the Tokyo region raise livestock, but their products account for a whopping 16 percent of all farm output in yen terms.
"That gives you an idea of the industry's importance," said Goda of TMLES. "Twelve million people in metropolitan Tokyo need to be fed."
Meanwhile, old-timers such as Sawai's father, Katsumi, are hoping value-added farming will breathe life into ancient traditions increasingly shunned by younger generations.
"In this day and age of internationalization, we're being flooded with imports," said Katsumi, 73. "It's the responsibility of Japan's farmers to provide safe food for Japan's consumers."
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