It has been exported to a number of countries including Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the United States, and is numerous in some of them.

Until the eighteenth century it was a large tawny-coloured pig with lop ears, often with darker patches.

[5]: 551 [6] In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it was substantially modified by cross-breeding with small black pigs imported from Asia.

The Berkshire was listed as vulnerable in 2008; fewer than 300 breeding sows were known to exist at that time, but with the revived popularity of the breed through its connection to the Japanese marketing of a "wagyu for pork" connection, the numbers have increased.

[10] The Japanese Kagoshima Berkshire, which apparently derives from two British Berkshire pigs imported to Japan in the 1930s, is considered a separate breed;[5]: 629  the meat may be marketed as Kurobuta pork, and can command a premium price.