Why are Muslims and Jews always giving the pig a hard time, when chickens and their eggs often carry?

Question

Salmonella, but you don't hear about Muslims and Jews bashing chickens. Isn't it about time that their prejudice against the pig, due to a belief held in the past, came to an end in the modern age?

Answer 1

Jewish and Muslim dietary laws are based in location. The desert - with some parts of that desert bordering on bodies of water. The land animals and sea creatures that are a no-no were the ones that would most likely make you sick if not properly prepared or left out in the heat too long.

Pig - from Wikipedia - Trichinosis, also called trichinellosis, or trichiniasis, is a parasitic disease caused by eating raw or undercooked pork and wild game products infected with the larvae of a species of roundworm Trichinella spiralis, commonly called the trichina worm. The few cases in the United States are mostly the result of eating undercooked game or home reared pigs. It is most common in the developing world and where pigs are commonly fed raw garbage.

Shellfish - Marine toxins are naturally occurring chemicals that can contaminate certain seafood. The seafood contaminated with these chemicals frequently looks, smells, and tastes normal. When humans eat such seafood, disease can result.

What sort of diseases do marine toxins cause?

The most common diseases caused by marine toxins in United States in order of incidence are scombrotoxic fish poisoning, ciguatera poisoning, paralytic shellfish poisoning, neurotoxic shellfish poisoning and amnesic shellfish poisoning.

In a desert setting, you are less likely to get ill from eating properly cooked chicken and pork. But now? With the advent of Avian Flu and BSE?

Perhaps all of us should take a clue from the Hindus and become vegetarians!

Answer 2

A couple of months ago, I was surfing for info about the avian bird flu, and I got alittle sidetracked with an article about how pigs are actually much closer to humans in terms of spreading diseases than birds (including chickens). I wish I could remember exactly where I found the site, but it said that many diseases that survive in a pig's body can exist easily in the human body. This is not the case for most animals. This similarity is one reason that pig bone is often used in humans for different surgical procedures.

I wonder if the prohibition against pork was God's way of protecting humans from contamination with some types of diseases..... . Personally, I'm not a huge fan of meat anyway, but it's just a thought.

Hoping the best for you...

Answer 3

quite sure eggs do not carry salmonella, and the chicken only gets infected with it if handled badly and unsanitarily, or its left out too long, ect.

its also easily gotten rid of by simply cooking it properly.

chicken also isn't very palatable when undercooked, where meats like pork and beef, can be just fine as far as edibility when not cooked through.

again, chicken cooked to a normal degree for it to be appetizing, and not mingled with uncooked chicken, will ABSOLUTELY not have Salmonella, and eggs? wtf are you talking about?

Pork can be more readily undercooked, (due to the fact it doesn't have to be cooked through to be appetizing) and some things that pork carries can even survive proper cooking.

the meat itself in pork is comparatively filthy, due to the habits and nature of the animal.

another point is that chickens don't eat meat or excrement(bugs and such don't count as meat) where pigs will eat whatever is handy.
by kashrut, you have to be certain on its diet, this is why predatory animals are not kosher, because if the thing it ate, was unclean, so would its meat. thus, plant-eating animals, you know aren't going to have been eating unclean foods.

the fact is even modern pigs are not as clean as beef or chicken, or other kosher animals, though its not nearly as dangerous as it once was.

its interesting though to think how that the laws outlawing jews from eating pork and similar animals, came LONG LONG LONG before we scientifically knew why it was a bad idea.

Answer 4

Their aversion is that the pig is a scavenger who normally eats garbage. That makes it a potential disease carrier. Chickens are not scavengers. They go for grain and insects without looking for dead things.
salmonella is caused by modern agribusiness farming in which slaughtered healthy and unhealthy chickens are dipped into the same tank of water to clean them. any with germs pass them along to any others in the batch.

Answer 5

G-d told us not to eat it. It has nothing to do with it being clean, we can't eat rabbits either.

Answer 6

back then they didnt