Originally Posted by x7fifteen4
Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches... The Riddles of culture
Every one knows examples of apparently irrational food habits. Chinese like dog meat but despise cow milk; we like cow milk but we won't eat dogs; some tribes in Brazil relish ants but despise venison. And it goes around the world. It's a challenge of having to explain why certain people should hate, while others love, the very same animal.
The half of the riddle that pertains to pig haters is well known to Jews, Moslems, and Christians. The god of the ancient Hebrews went out of his way to denounce the pig as unclean, a beast that pollutes if it is tasted or touched. The pig remains an abomination, despite the fact that it can convert grains and tubers into high grade fats and protien more efficiently than any other animal.
It is popular to believe that the pig is a dirty animal- dirtier than others because it wallows in its own urine and eats excrement. But linking physical uncleanliness to religious abhorrence leads to inconsistencies. Cows that are kept in a confined space also splash about in their own urine and feces. And hungry cows will eat human excrement with gusto. Dogs and chikens do the same thing without getting anyone very upset, and the anciets must have known that pigs raised in clean pens make fastidious house pets.
To Moses Maimonides, court physicians to Saladin during the twelfth century in Cairo, Egypt, we owe the first naturalistic explanation of the Jewish and Moslem rejection of pork. Maimonides said that God had intended the ban on pork as a public health measure. Swine's flesh "has a bad and damaging effect upon the body," wrote the rabbi. Maimonides was none too specific about the medical reasons for this opinion, but he was the emperor's physician, and his judgement was widely respected.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the discovery that trichinosis was caused by eating undercooked pork was interpreted as a precise verification of the wisdon of Maimonides. Reform minded Jews rejoiced in the rational substratum of the biblical codes and promptly renounced the taboo on pork. If properly cooked, pork is not a menace to the public health, and so its consumption cannot be offensive to God. This provoked rabbis of more fundamentalist persuasion to launch a counterattack against the entire naturalistic tradition. If Jahweh had merely wanted to protect the health of His people, He would have instructed them to eat only well cooked pork rather than no pork at all. Clearly, it is argued, Jahweh had something else in mind-something more important than the mere physical well-being.
In addition to this theological inconsistency, Maimonides' explanation suffers medical and epidemiological contradictions. The pig is a vector for human disease, but so are other domestic animals freely consumed by Moslems and Jews. For example, undercooked beef is a source of parasites, notably tapeworms. Cattle, goats, and sheep are also vectors for brucellosis, a common bacterial infection in underdeveloped countries that is accompanied by fever, chills, sweats, weakness, pain, and aches. The most dangerous form is Brucellocis melitensis, transmitted by goats and sheep. Finally, there is anthtax, a disease transmitted by cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and mules, but not by pigs. Unlike trichinosis, which seldom has fatal consequences and which does not even produce symptoms in the majority of individuals, anthrax often runs a rapid course that begins with body boils and terminates in death through blood poisoning.
The solution to the riddle of the pig requires us to adopt a much broader definition of health, one that includes the essential processes by which animals, plants, and people manage to coexist in viable natural and cultural communities. The Bible and the Koran condemned the pig because farming was a threat to the integrity of the basic cultural and natural ecosystems of the Middle East.
The ancient people of the Middle East herded sheep, goats, and cattle. Within the overall pattern of mixed farming and pastoral complex, the divine prohibition against pork constituted a sound ecological stategy. The nomadic Isrealites could not raise pigs in their arid habitats, while for the semi sedentary and village farming populations, pigs were more of a threat than an asset.
The basic reason for this is that the world zones of pastoral nomadism correspond to unforested plains and hills that are too arid for rainfall agriculture and that cannot easily be irrigated. The domestic animals best adapted to these zones are cattle, sheep, and goats. They have sacks anterior to their stomachs which enable them to digest grass, leaves, and other foods consisting mainly of cellulose more efficiently that any other mammals.
The pig, however, is primarily a creature of forests and shaded riverbanks. Although it is omnivorous, its best weight gain is from food low in cellulose- nuts, fruits, tubers, and especially grains, making it a direct competitor of man. It cannot subsist on grass alone, and nowhere in the world do fully nomadic pastoralists raise significant numbers of pigs. The pig has the further disadvantage of not being a practical source of milk and of being notoriously difficult to herd over long distances.
Above all, the pig is thermodynamically ill adapted to the hot, dry climate of the Negev, the Jordan Valley, and the other lands of the Bible and the Koran. Compared to cattle, goats, and sheep, the pig has an inefficient system for regulating its body temerature. Despite the expression "To sweat like a pig," it has been proven that pigs can't sweat at all. Human beings, the sweatiest of all mammals, cool themselves by evaporating as much a 1000 grams of body liquid per hour from each square meter of body surface. The best the pig can manage is 30 grams per square meter. Even sheep evaporate twice as much body liquid through their skins as pigs.
To compensate for its lack of protective hair and its inability to sweat, the pig must dampen its skin with external moisture. It prefers to do this by wallowing in fresh clean mud, but it will cover its skin with its own urine and feces if nothing else is available. Below 84 degrees F., pigs kept in pens deposit their excreta away from their sleeping and feeding areas, while above 84 degrees F. they begin to excrete indiscriminately throughout the pen. The higher the temperature, the "dirtier" they become. So there is some truth to the theory that the religious uncleanliness of the pig rests upon actual physical dirtiness. Only it is not the nature of the pig to be dirty everywhere, rather it is in the nature of the hot, arid habitat of the Middle East to make the pig maximally dependent upon the cooling effect of its own excrement.
Any animal that is raised primarily for its meat is a luxury. This generalization applies as well to preindustrial pastoralists, who seldom exploit their herd primarily for meat.
Among the ancient mixed farming and pastoralist communities fo the Middle East, domestic animals were valued primarily as a source of milk, cheeses, hides, dung, fiber and traction for plowing. Goats, sheep, and cattle provided ample amount of these item plus and occasional supplement of lean meat. From the beginnig, therefore, pork must have been a luxury food, esteemed for its succulent, tender, and fatty qualities.
Between 7,000 and 2,000 B.C. pork became still more of a luxury. During this period there was a sixtyfold increase in the human population of the Middle East. Shade and water, the natural condition appropriate for pig raising, became progressively more scarce, and pork became even more of an ecological and economic luxury.
As in the case of the beef-eating taboo, the greater the temptation, the greater the need for divine interdiction. This relationship is generally accepted as suitable for explaining why the gods are always so interested in combating sexual temptations such as incest and adultery. Here it is applied to a tempting food. The Middle East is the wrong place to raise pigs, but pork remains a succulent treat. People always find it difficult to resist such temptation on their own. Hence Jahweh was heard to say that swine were unclean, not only as food, but to the touch as well. Allah was heard to repeat the same message for the same reason: It was ecologically maladaptive to try to raise pigs in substantial numbers. Small scale production would only increase the temptation. Better then, to interdict the consumption of pork entirely, and to concentrate on raising goats, sheep, and cattle. Pigs tasted good but it was too expensive to feed them and keep them cool.
