Pietrain

A Belgian breed of domestic pig native to Wallonia, taking its name from the village of Pietrain in the municipality of Jodoigne in Walloon Brabant, in northern Wallonia. It first appeared around 1920 and received formal recognition as a breed in 1950; its origins remain unclear, though it has been suggested that Pietrain farmers recognized and selectively bred for a genetic mutation causing muscular hypertrophy. From about 1960 the breed was also reared in Germany, principally in Baden-Wurttemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein, where it is used as a sire for cross-breeding, and in the 1980s and 1990s researchers at the veterinary faculty of the University of Liege crossed it with stress-resistant Large White stock to develop a Pietrain strain free of the gene for porcine stress syndrome, also called malignant hyperthermia, to which the original stock had been especially susceptible.