Experts in the northeastern China province of Liaoning are applying to list in the Guinness Book of Records a pig that weighed 900 kilograms at death, the heaviest ever reported in China.

The pig was 2.5 meters long, had a waistline of 2.23 meters and a tusk of 14.4 centimeters long when it died on Feb. 5, aged five, said its keeper, Xu Changjin, a veteran farmer of Wafangdian city.

Xu said on Monday that he had kept his pig in a nicely built sty and fed it quality fodder all its life.

Pigs are not pets in China and are rarely kept for more than three years before they are slaughtered for the dinner table.

Prof. Liu Mingyu, a life scientist with prestigious Liaoning University, noted that Xu's pig had died from lack of exercise. "It had grown too big to move around," he explained.

The heaviest pig reported before it -- one in the suburbs of the eastern municipality of Shanghai -- weighed 700 kilos, Prof. Liu added.

Liu has made the pig into a specimen for the Liaoning Provincial Agricultural Museum.

Sources with the museum say they will prepare for its Guinness listing soon.

(Xinhua News Agency  February 24, 2004)