WHEN it comes to food, and what we like to eat, the ebb and flow of fashion doesn't usually take quite so long. But, as the millennium approaches, and after a hiatus of several centuries, our taste for wild boar is set for reappraisal.

And unlike kangaroo, crocodile, and sun-dried tomatoes, the fact that wild boar once flourished as a native species bodes well for its long-

term renaissance.

Students of Roman history will know of Asterix and Obelix's enthusiasm for brave and breathless boar hunts, followed by spit-roasted boar at rabble-rousing feasts. A few centuries later, the kings and queens of England chased wild boar cross their royal estates; and they and their court enjoyed many a splendid banquet of it, seated at long tables in tapestry-hung and draughty Great Halls.

Now, after many hundreds of years of neglect in this country, wild boar is once more regaining its position as valuable and highly-prized foodstuff. It is now two centuries since the last free-living wild boar was killed in Britain. And although since then the sport of wild boar hunting has continued to flourish in Europe, and France has a highly developed wild boar farming industry, it has been only in the past decade or so that wild boar farming has begun to be established in Britain. In 1989 the British Wild Boar Association was set up. Now Scotland, too, has a handful of wild boar farms. But the only one of significant commercial consequence is that of enterprising and far-sighted farmer, Andrew Johnstone of Bridge of Earn.

Two years ago, after an entrepreneurial career as bungee jump and off-road event organiser in Perth (following an agricultural degree and a couple of years of world

travel), Johnstone decided to come back to the family farm, just south of Perth. He was keen to diversify, and thought briefly of ostriches. However, the prospect of commercial success (in what turned out to be ruin for many) was, he thought, impossible. So instead he bought eight wild boars from Essex - three males and five females. These were originally of European extraction, bought by British zoos, and the result of surplus zoo breeding stock.

He fenced off a field of his largely arable seed-producing farm and allowed them free range. By the following winter all five were pregnant, and last spring they produced some 35 little piglets between them, all without assistance. Wild boars, says Johnstone, make excellent mothers - much more alert and less clumsy than domestic pigs. They multi-suckle their young until they are three months' old and the piglets are weaned. And then, for the next nine to 12 months they slowly grow and mature till they are ready for slaughter. There is a vast difference, says Johnstone, between the commercial domestic pig and wild boar. So much, that, although they are both of the same species - sus scrofa - and are inter-fertile, they have to be handled, looked after, and managed quite differently.

Their litters are smaller and the animals look quite different. Wild boars are much smaller, and beneath their dense and thick brown bristles is a soft woolly down which helps to keep them warm. Their elongated and prominent snouts are brilliantly designed for rooting. This is very important, says Johnstone.

Because they ingest lots of iron and minerals from the earth, they gain immunity from illness and need no injections of hormones, antibiotics, or stimulants. Their diet is 100% natural - mainly seed grown on the farm, mixed with ground barley and wheat, and surplus farm potatoes. Apart from the odd crow or jackdaw, caught

drinking at their water trough, they are vegetarians.

What strikes the observer most forcibly, is their lively gregariousness. They run and play together in their field just like a little troop of children at playschool, or a gang of mad and playful puppies. Yet, they are classed as dangerous wild animals, along with pumas, tigers, and the like, which means getting a Dangerous Wild Animals Licence; and they need very effective fencing - to contain the hooligan element, who are always keen to break out,

says Johnstone.

Wild boar grow much more slowly than ordinary pigs. Whereas the latter, stuffed with concentrated feed and antibiotics, and relatively inactive, go to the slaughterhouse at three months, wild boar develops for around a year. And because its food is natural and it loves its boisterous games, the resulting meat is entirely different - lean, low in cholesterol, darker and firmer in texture, a little gamey in taste.

The market for this superior, naturally grown product has enormous potential. Worries about beef, about infections and tasteless meats, and the possible ill-effects of the hormones, antibiotics, and chemicals which may be harboured in such products and, finally, an increasing interest in the taste and quality of food, have all played their part in creating this potential market. Johnstone has no trouble in selling all his wild boars as they reach maturity. Most go to the only Rare Breeds Survival Trust-accredited butcher in Scotland - Stewart Cook of Bridge of Weir.

And so he is building up his numbers - he has bought more stock and a third litter is on the way - and he plans to widen the scope of his enterprise by selling to superior hotels and restaurants, producing smoked wild boar bacon, and developing the manufacture of pates and other wild boar products.

Meanwhile, he gets great pleasure just from watching these merry little beasts rooting in the mud, playing with his boot-laces, snuffling in his pockets. And, in a wider context, as governments move towards encouraging less intensive production, as marginal land is taken out of conventional agricultural production, and as set-aside areas are converted to woodlands (where wild boar could play a useful role in controlling undergrowth), it would seem that wild boar will make a

significant contribution both to the agricultural economy and to the nation's gastronomy.