One of the factors that inhibit pig domestication involves other sources food. Pigs are not part of the wide variety of animals who are classified as cud chewers. Cows, sheep, and goats (three common cud chewers) chew on high-cellulose grasses which humans can’t digest. However, pigs compete with humans for food which makes domesticating pigs inefficient, as it would mean humans sacrificing their own food.
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Learn more about the modern pig industry!
Click here to go to a comic book presentation that explains the conditions in pig farms and fertility clinics: |
See what renowned Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn has to say about the pig prohibition:
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These factors exist ubiquitously and potentially hindered pig domestication worldwide, but a set of unique geographic features makes pig-domestication particularly impractical in the Middle East, namely the hot Middle Eastern climate.
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The passage from Leviticus:
"But the pig, although it has a cloven hoof that is completely split, since it does not regurgitate its cud, it is unclean for you. You shall not eat of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you." Dealing with the taboo: Jews often refer to the pig as "davar acher" ("something else"), and many rabbis speculate this is so Jews won't get curious and try it. |
Pigs can’t sweat, and they have no protection against the sun’s rays, so they roll in the mud to cool themselves down and occasionally drop dead in high temperatures, which are frequent in the Middle East. Pigs are much less well-off and healthy in hot temperatures. Conditions worsened still when humans starting settling and began cutting down forests. As this was their only source of shade, pigs struggled even more to survive. They required even more care, resources, and sacrifices in the hot Middle East than in most other places.
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The taboo makes perfect ecological sense and reinforces eating habits that should have already existed. As Harris writes, “[The mandates were] mostly codifications of preexisting traditional food prejudices and avoidances.” They don’t make nourishment more difficult for their followers, but instead, help their followers have more efficient and healthy lifestyles.
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Fun Fact: Islam is more popular in places that are already ecologically bad for pigs because people are less hesitant to give up their pork!
Fun Fact about the above Fun Fact:
In order to help Islam spread, people used to wipe out forests, thereby creating less pig friendly areas. |
"I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
― Winston S. Churchill |
"Teach him how you will, a pig will never play the flute."
― Robert Jordan |
“When we think of coconuts or pigs, there are no coconuts or pigs in the brain.”
― Gregory Bateson |
“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
― George Bernard Shaw |