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LINK Why billions of people won't eat pork (or why we don't know) - YouTube

This is a scholarly, anthropological study of why one third of humanity won't eat pork.


Do you know of any more reasons why people won't eat pork?
Do pigs naturally prefer to be unclean?

AnonySchmoose 8 Feb 18
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1

I remember recently watching a Thailand video of a wedding and they had trussed live pigs on poles and one looked right at the camera with a fearful/worried expression FULL of intelligence. Just knowing what was going to happen was very hard to take for me. Not a full vegetarian, yet. But I might be soon again.

Hathacat Level 9 Feb 23, 2021

I rarely eat meat or seafood now. Mostly because of big warehouse farm and slaughterhouse cruelties. Also, because of effects of huge farms on sustainability, i.e., overuse of water; overuse of land for livestock feed; use of toxic fertilizers and pesticides. I quit eating seafood, due to threat of extinction. I obtain protein & vitamins from sustainable foods.

1

actually we would all do the planet a favor if we ate less meat it is the most expensive thing to produce more feed and water and land is dedicated to farming to feed livestock .....this take over and clearing forests etc can be a big contributor to the diseases that will be future pandemics because it forces animals to interact and then to spread the diseases to humans

we all have to learn to not be so greedy and make a commitment to one or two days a week for veggie only meals

and I love meat of some sort for every meal

I agree with everything you said here.

@AnonySchmoose I read that young couples should make a plan for life together and promise only 2 kids and to walk as much as possible and get bikes for shorter trips and go meatless 2 days and we could save our planet ''''who knows I get the bug now and then and make a meatless day once a week...and we recycle all we can and our house id a recycling haven if we get a meal out we wash and save the containers and reuse them ....at family dinners if leftovers are taken we use those take out containers

1

When I met my former partner she said she would not eat pork. She felt pigs were smart and she had too much respect for them to eat them. That was our first, tiny, step to vegetarianism.

JackPedigo Level 9 Feb 18, 2021

I've met people on Agnostic who don't eat animals because they respect them.
I try to be like that, because of the extinction threat, but occasionally I eat meat.

@AnonySchmoose Some times it just takes time. It can really be hard to go cold tofurkey. LOL

1

Under cooked swine can carry parasites that are transferable to humans. If one lives where fuel is sparse one can not cook the cadaver to hygienic standards. Many cultures who have access to fuel such as the Asian cultures, Hawaii, Phillipines, China, Mexico, South Amercan indulge in this flesh. Pork rinds anyone? Why do a billion not eat insects. Sushi is questionable also.

Mooolah Level 8 Feb 18, 2021

Yes, maybe one billion people have a bias against eating insects.
It is understandable to not eat animals that get worms, which could remain alive after being eaten.

4

Sheep, goats, cows, etc. are basically benign. Pigs, (especially wild ones), can & do actually kill & eat any type of meat, including humans.
I grew upon a farm, and was warned against falling into the pig pen many times. Chickens sometimes strayed there, for corn kernels, and usually just a leftover feather or two told their fate.

AnneWimsey Level 9 Feb 18, 2021

Could be that's another reason for the taboo.
Wow, there may be a lot reasons!

1

Brilliant discussion! I have a couple of friends from Africa both of different blends of syncretic faiths. Both are mixtures of tribal beliefs with Muslim, catholicism, and bahia for seasoning in different ratios. They can't stand each other over the pork issue. I have some ammo for a lively shootout with them now.

Thanks, thoughtful comment about syncretic mix of beliefs.
Not so sure about a shootout. Would you like to rephrase that?

@AnonySchmoose My Texan roots are showing. Thats how most discussions about religions are settled here.

1

Yup religion..

Charlene Level 9 Feb 18, 2021

Yes, religion is the main excuse, and resulted from other excuses.

4

One reason not mentioned strangely is perhaps, xenophobia, hatred not of pigs, but of the people who eat them.

The earliest and most basic part of all Abrahamic religions, and the period from which the law giving first stems, is the story of the Jewish Exodus. How a group of slaves came out of Egypt crossed the desert and grabbed a territory of fertile farmland by violent invasion. Except that it probably never happened like that. Almost certainly, for many historical reasons, there was no great exodus from Egypt. But it is quite possible, that nomadic shepherds from the Siani desert did invade the Fertile Crescent perhaps repeatedly. They probably believed that their origins were in Egypt, because they had frequently blended with runaway slaves and criminals escaping into the desert, over a long period of centuries.

But at some time, or times, they were successful in invading the lands of the settled farmers, the rich fertile lands to the north, which they coming out of the desert must have envied greatly. And in those days how do you tell the difference between yourselves as a nation, and the people from who you steal land. How do you stop your young people intermarrying with the foreigners, giving them empathy, adopting their ways. How do you keep the hate going, the group together, and continue to promote violence, when there is no obvious race difference, the same skin colour, and in the days before passports and birth documents.

What you do, is you look for the biggest and most obvious differences between you. And to people who live a materially simple life, spending all their days in subsistence herding, and caring for their livestock. What is the most important thing of all, big single difference between us and them ? We are shepherds we spend all day, every day, looking after and thinking about sheep and goats, perhaps the odd cow, but mainly sheep. They too have the odd cow, but the one animal they have in the towns, that could not live in the desert, the big lifestyle difference between us is the pig. That is how they defined themselves, the 'WE' the shepherds, and the 'THEM' the keepers of pigs.

And so what do you tell your young people not to do, most of all, for they must not become part of the hated them who we intend to kill and drive out ? You tell them that they must not marry them, (You can take the virgin girls as slaves. ) you must not worship their gods, but most of all, you must not live like them, especially keep their horrible animals. Keeping strange animals, that just proves how depraved and evil 'they' are. The pig becomes the same sort of symbol of xenophobic hate, that skin colour does in the American South, or the French eating frogs for the English, it is the symbol of the foreign other.

Fernapple Level 9 Feb 18, 2021

That is a thoughtful analysis. I wish to thank you. To 'identify' an entire cultural group by superficial differences in order to feel justified in treating them as inferior does seem historically realistic.

There is health reasons not to eat pork.

Since the pig’s digestive system operates rather basically, many of these toxins remain in its system to be stored in its more than adequate fatty tissues ready for our consumption. [draxe.com]

@AnonySchmoose At a later date that narrative also suited the Arabs too, since they were also a desert people trying to steal land in the fertile areas of Mesopotamia and North Africa. And since it was already established and written down for them by the Hebrews, a given.

@Word Yes that is in the video. But such reasons of health and hygene tend to dominate the debate, because of course, theists today, are trying to justify the texts, and put the best spin on them.

It is possible and probable that health was a contributing reason, it is the most often given today. (By theists especially.) But I doubt that in the Bronze Age, health seemed anything like as urgent an issue as fighting the guy coming at you swinging a sword, for the land to feed your children, and persuading those children to keep up the fight.

@Fernapple much of the laws for the nation of Israel has to do with health, hygiene and cleanliness.

I can understand telling the bronze age people "just don't eat pork". The "scientific " understanding can be a lot more complicated. Did they have brick school houses built by true masons to teach a lot of complicated science to goat herders? No, so its easier to just say, "do this. Do that, don't do this or that" rather than going thru and teaching all the scientific details when there isn't even a brick school house built by true masons in every pasture of sheep grazing.

@Word True, and I would not say that health and hygiene were not important parts of the laws. Only, let us not put whitewash on those times, they were people just like us, and there were probably just as many bad nasty reasons for doing things, and making laws, then, as there are today.

When a white American evangelical tells you not to put on a face mask, it could be that, as they may claim, they are concerned about the heath dangers that could come about because of badly washed masks. And/or it could be just, that they hate any instruction which comes from a government which they hate in turn, because it will not indulge them in their racism. That is not to say that there is no danger from unhygienic face masks kept on too long and not washed properly, ( though it is trivial compared with Covid, ) just that the reason given is not always the only motivation for saying something, and not always the main one.

@Word what "toxins"???? Petroleum by-products? Asbestos? Lead paint? Not-so-much back then.......

@AnneWimsey Yes. I often thought. Since there are some health problems with under-cooked pork, so if god knew everything, why did he not just tell them to cook it well. LOL ?

The frogs eat the French? Who knew?
Just kidding . The English language does not make this clear unless one says, the French who eat frogs. (Among other things such as sauces to mask the fetid odor of questionable meat delectable carrion).

@Mooolah I often cut up French people into small pieces to feed my frogs ?

@AnneWimsey free radicals

As to your paragraph regarding Exodus and Hebrews escaping Slavery in Ancient Egypt, that tale is a 100% load of biblical CRAP.
AND it has been Archeologically proven to 100% FALSE .

@Triphid Very true, I should perhaps have put it more strongly, but was perhaps more interested in how the story may have started.

2

Love my bacon

bobwjr Level 10 Feb 18, 2021

Rarel . . . now and then I will eat a little bacon.

NOTHING beats a nice Pork Stir-Fry with a Sweet and Sour Sauce.

1

The not so clean pigs.

Word Level 8 Feb 18, 2021

However, when their environment permits it, they prefer to be clean.

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