THEDOMESTICLIVESTOCKRESOURCESOF TURKEY:PIGS R.T.WILSON (1) (1) Bartridge Partners, Umberleigh, Devon EX37 9AS, UK. O.YILMAZ (2) (2) Department ofAnimal Science, Faculty ofAgriculture, M.ERTUGRUL (3) Igdir University,Igdir,Turkey. (3) Department ofAnimal Science, Faculty ofAgriculture, Ankara University,Turkey. ThePigJournal(2011)6626-30 INTRODUCTION The rich array of farm animal resources in Turkey includes cattle, water buffalo, sheep, goat, camel, pig, poultry, horses, donkeys and mules that derive from many and various locations and backgrounds. The domestic species vary in importance and in the way in which they add to national and household economies and in their roles in household food securityandcontributionstofamilylivelihoods.Turkeydeclared itself a secular republic in 1923, and the state has remained a lay entity throughout the succeeding 90 years. Almost the wholeofitspeoplehave,however,continuedtoadheretothe Islamic faith which forbids the eating of the flesh and otherwise edible by-products of the pig.The pig is therefore a very minor component of the domestic livestock spectrum in Turkey,in which category but for different reasons it is joined by the domestic (water) buffalo (Yilmaz et al., 2011a) and camel (Yilmaz et al., 2011b).This paper describes the history, presentnumbersanddistribution,usesanddiseasesofthepig inTurkey. RESULTS History SoutheasternTurkey is an area in which wild pigs, Sus scrofa, were first domesticated.Archaeological excavations at Cayonu Tepesi,a Neolithic occupation site about 40km north west of Diyarbakir in Southeastern Turkey at the foot of the Taurus Mountains, provide evidence for the early domestication of the wild boar. Based on excavations and recovery of a relatively high frequency of pig remains and their dating by radioisotope carbon-14, and a comparison of osteometrical data with that from modern European wild boars, it seems thatpigswerebeingdomesticatedoratleast“tamed”asearly asthe10thmillennium,orsome12,000yearsago.Datafrom Hallan Cemi Tepesi, a site in the eastern Taurus Mountains, indicates an even earlier date for the first shift within a Sus scrofa population from completely“wild” behaviour to a way of living closer to humans (Meadow et al., 2001). It seems clear from the archaeological evidence that the pig has a very long and almost certainly continuous history in Turkey. In general, however, it is only the Tunguz Turks (historical immigrants from Manchuria) that have raised pigs both before and after the advent of Islam.The pig in Turkish is known as‘domuz’ which is derived from the word‘Tunguz’. The Tunguz used to capture wild boar and feed them for slaughter as well as keeping domestic pigs (Eberhard, 1943). WildboararecommoninTurkey,inpartbecausetheyarenot generally hunted on religious grounds. Local populations are regularly augmented by cross border movements. In April 2011,forexample,therewasaninfluxofwildpigsacrossthe AraksRiverfromArmenia,theanimalssupposedlyfleeingfrom fires on the Armenian side into Tuzluca District of Igdir THEPIGJOURNAL–VOLUME66 26 SUMMARY The pig is just one species in the rich array of farm animals that is found in Turkey. There is archaeological evidence from the Neolithic age of wild pigs, Sus scrofa, undergoing the process of domestication in southeastern Turkey some 12,000 years ago. Turkey is a secular republic but its people are mainly of the Islamic faith which forbids the consumption as food of the flesh of the pig. It is thus understandable that there are very few pigs in the country and these supply a small Christian, mainly Greek community and the tourist trade. There have been no reported cases of any of the pig diseases on List A of the Office International des Epizooties (OIE) (although Foot and Mouth Disease occurs in the extant wild boar population), nor of any of the zoonotic helminths, but bacterial pneumonias have been isolated on a number of occasions. There is no producer organisation for pigs and the species is not included in Turkey’s otherwise extensive programme of conservation of food animals. Neglect and even antipathy by the government and its services may eventually lead to the disappearance of this species from Turkey.