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Story: Pigs and the pork industry

Pork-product labels

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Pork-product labels

Some delicacies of earlier times are still eaten today. Boiled beef and brawn were tinned by the West Coast Meat & Produce Export Co. Ltd, Pātea, between about 1890 and 1920. Brawn is pork jelly, usually made from the boiled head of a pig. The ox tongues were from Mitchell & Richards, Whanganui.

Using this item

Alexander Turnbull Library, Gear Meat Company Collection (Eph-F-MEAT-Gear)

Reference: Eph-F-MEAT-Gear-046

by Archibald Dudingston Willis

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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How to cite this page

Allan Gillingham, Pigs and the pork industry – Pig farming, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/ephemera/15440/pork-product-labels (accessed 4 June 2026).

Story by Allan Gillingham, published 1 March 2009.