Are Your Animals Unclean?

According to the Bible, Qur'an, Torah and Talmud, certain animals were considered "unclean" and therefore should not be eaten.  One of the most common of these, or course, is pork.  Bad news for bacon-lovers!  Let's examine why...

From and immunological standpoint, pork carries an awful lot of bacteria, viruses, worms and parasites that can be transmitted to humans, with devastating results.  These include:

Trichinella  Spiratis, one of the most harmful parasites known to man.  There are no less than 10 other parasites pork is known to carry.  In addition to this, pork can carry bacterial diseases such as tuberculosis, salmonella, paratyphoid, and viral diseases including small pox, and influenza.

Pigs are voracious eaters, and sadly will consume the excrement of humans if it is readily available, as it surely was 2000, 3000, 0r 4000 years ago.  Add to that that pigs are immunologically similar to people (we get the same diseases) and you basically have a 4-legged death-factory at your doorstep.

Chickens, on the other hand, can pass salmonella, avian flu, staphylococcus, and a few other minor food-poisoning bacteria.  Beef can carry E. Coli, tapeworms, and of course mad cow disease, which was hardly a concern until a few hundred years ago.

All these diseases can be prevented from spreading to humans if your meat is properly cooked.

SOOOOooo, from an anthropological standpoint, let's consider how these animals would have been cooked.  

In general, a chicken would have been cooked whole over a fire 2000, 3000, or 4000 years ago.  The internal temperature needed to prevent disease is about 160 degrees Fahrenheit.  This should be relatively easy to achieve over a fire, without ruining the meat, if you are roasting a chicken, due to their small size.

Beef are such large animals, it would be almost inconceivable that one would be cooked whole over a fire.  They would be butchered to smaller pieces.  Add to this that beef need only be cooked to an internal temperature of about 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and you were probably safe eating beef 2000+ years ago.

Pork, on the other hand, would likely be in-between as far as cooking whole or butchering.  Certainly the further back you go in history, the less likely a society would be to butcher a smallish pig.  Why do all that work if it could fit easily onto a spit?  To this day, we have pig roasts where people cook them whole over an open fire.  

Add to this the fact that the internal temperature needed to cook pork safely, 180 degrees Fahrenheit, might well not be achievable without ruining the flesh as a food, over an open fire.

In essence, the idea that pigs are of cloven hoof and do not ruminate, or that they wallow in their own muck, was probably observed after thousands and thousands had already died from the many diseases carried by the animal.

The idea that pigs are unclean, then, was reactionary and cautionary, with a purpose toward curtailing food-borne illness.  It could easily have been seen as "taboo" or forbidden by some higher power, to eat this flesh, as the rates of illness from it must have been much higher than for fish, chicken, or beef.

Interestingly, one might note that where pork has not historically been considered taboo, namely in China, it is also not forbidden to eat cat, dog, or even camel.  

Also interesting is that hare (rabbit) WOULD have been forbidden in most Western cultures, by the definitions in religious texts.  However, rabbit has historically been a food source in most places, possibly due to the ease of cooking it to an acceptable temperature to avoid disease.

These are surely a few things to think about when you are worrying over whether your Thanksgiving turkey will be dry or not!

Just for fun, here is a partial list of animals that, by religious text would be considered unclean:

Abalone, alligator, bat, bear, camel, cat, chameleon, clam, crow, dog, eagle, elephant, ferret, fox, hare, hawk, horse, kangaroo, lion, lizard, lobster, mole, mouse, owl, pelican, penguin, raccoon, rat, rhinoceros, skunk, snail, snake, squid, tiger, tortoise, vulture, weasel, wolf, and worm.

How many have YOU eaten?