Bayeux pig

Slow Food's Ark of Taste says the Bayeux pig comes from crosses between the Normandy pig and the black English Berkshire around the middle of the nineteenth century, in the Bessin. Before the Second World War nearly every farm in Normandy kept one. Races de France dates the breed syndicate to 1928 and says the breed almost disappeared after the Normandy landings.

Relaunch programmes began in the 1960s. The breed entered the national conservation programme for local pig breeds in 1984, LIGERAL (the collective herd-book association for French local pig breeds, hosted by the pig institute IFIP) was created in 1996, and the breed was officially recognised in 1999. Slow Food reports that three Berkshire boars were imported in 1996, creating six new family lines. In 2022 Races de France counted 155 pigs and 50 breeders.