Cows Good, Pigs Bad

[lpetrich]

Why do some people believe that cows are too good to eat, and some other people believe that pigs are too bad to eat?

The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig - Google Books by anthropologist Marvin Harris.

He proposes that the difference is in how much value they have when alive.

Domestic bovines have a lot of value when alive. They can be milked, they can carry loads, and they can pull plows and wagons. Eating one would deprive one of what that animal would contribute while alive, and I've seen speculation that the notion of cows as holy animals was invented to convince people to keep them alive.

Pigs don't have any such value when alive. Marvin Harris argues that they are an ecological nuisance in semidesert climates, wallowing in whatever water they can find. So in such places, one can dispense with pigs, and then justify doing so by saying how bad they are.

 

[lpetrich]

Why is it only in India that the notion of cow sacredness got started? Many people from many places in the world have a lot of respect for these animals, but still eat these animals' meat.  Cattle in religion and mythology

In any case, belief in cow sacredness is alive and well in India, especially in northern India, sometimes called the "Cow Belt": Cow belt - Bharatpedia and  Cattle slaughter in India and  Cow protection movement

Many Indians eat water buffalo, though some Indians consider them as sacred as domestic bovines proper, (Bos (primigenius) taurus. That brings up the question of how far does cow sacredness extend. Is it just the domestic species? Or if also some closely related species, how closely related? Are bison also sacred? A multi-calibrated mitochondrial phylogeny of extant Bovidae (Artiodactyla, Ruminantia) and the importance of the fossil record to systematics | SpringerLink

Divergence from domestic bovines:

• Bison: 4 Mya
• Water buffalo: 11 Mya
• Sheep and goats: 16 Mya (they themselves: 8 Mya)
• Deer: 19 Mya

In fairness, a believer in cow sacredness might say that refusal to eat dog meat and cat meat is much the same thing.

 

[lpetrich]

As to rejection of pig meat, we have some archeological evidence of when that got started. (PDF) Pig Husbandry in Iron Age Israel and Judah: New Insights Regarding the Origin of the “Taboo”

Proposes another reason: "Pigs breed fast, and do not need to be driven to pasture when there is enough available food, such as vegetables and animal waste. They are usually exploited for their meat, considering the lack of secondary products that can be extracted from them. They cannot be driven far and hence domestic pigs are not suitable for nomadic life."

Also: "The wild boar was quite common in many terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistoric sites 8. In the 5th – 4th mill., almost all sites in the non-arid zones of the Fertile Crescent show an occurrence of (domesticated) pigs higher than 7%, with a close correlation between environmental conditions and pig frequencies. The abundance of pigs depended on rainfall, with 300 mm isohyet as the limit. Starting in the 3rd mill., the appearance of pigs was affected by a combination of environmental, economic and social factors. In studies on the Middle Bronze Age, pig frequency is considered a reference for sedentism, as they cannot be driven far and are not part of nomadic animal husbandry."

So it's mainly stay-at-homes who like pigs, it seems.

I've also found The Pig’s Testimony - El testimonio del cerdo - pigs-testimony-yahalom.pdf

 

[Bronzeage]

<snip>

Pigs don't have any such value when alive. Marvin Harris argues that they are an ecological nuisance in semidesert climates, wallowing in whatever water they can find. So in such places, one can dispense with pigs, and then justify doing so by saying how bad they are.

The nuisance of pigs is not the issue. Pigs can't eat grass or other foliage as cows and goats do. In an arid environment, pigs compete with humans for food. As you said, a pigs only value is its meat consumed as food. That meat is created by food a human could have consumed. It takes about 3 pounds of feed to produce one pound of pork and this is the modern standard. Even though food consumption to produce one pound of beef is four to seven pounds, a lot of that feed is grass.

In an ecology where pigs cannot find wild foods, humans must produce food for them. Using a pig as a middle man in the food chain is an unacceptable inefficiency. In a time when famine and starvation were realistic fears, pig farming can't be tolerated.

 

[lpetrich]

(environmental-nuisance theory)

The nuisance of pigs is not the issue. Pigs can't eat grass or other foliage as cows and goats do. In an arid environment, pigs compete with humans for food. As you said, a pigs only value is its meat consumed as food. That meat is created by food a human could have consumed. It takes about 3 pounds of feed to produce one pound of pork and this is the modern standard. Even though food consumption to produce one pound of beef is four to seven pounds, a lot of that feed is grass.

In an ecology where pigs cannot find wild foods, humans must produce food for them. Using a pig as a middle man in the food chain is an unacceptable inefficiency. In a time when famine and starvation were realistic fears, pig farming can't be tolerated.

That's another good reason.

 

[lpetrich]

The prohibition of pork is stated in the Bible, Leviticus 11. It uses taxonomic keys, which I like, and it contains some very odd mistakes that its authors could easily have avoided, like counting how many legs an insect has.

Of the larger land animals, only ruminants are allowed. No camels or horses or donkeys. Since these are work animals, prohibition of eating them is understandable.

There is a long list of birds that one is not supposed to eat. I find that baffling. It's hard to see any ideological reason for forbidding eating a whole lot of different bird species.

Of sea animals, one is allowed to eat fish, in the present sense of the word, non-tetrapod vertebrates or "finfish", but not any others. That means no shellfish. An ideological motive is easier to identify. The ancient Israelites lived in the highlands of Judea and Samaria, and they did not get along very well with the coastal people, the Philistines. So they could have decided that eating shellfish was an icky Philistine thing, not to be done.

Of insects, one is allowed to eat grasshoppers and other orthopterans, but not any others. Why only grasshoppers?

 

[lpetrich]

Later Jews went further. In Exodus 23:18 and 34:26, we find that one must not boil a young goat in its mother's milk, and later Jews interpreted that to mean that one must not mix meat and milk, much like these prohibitions of mixing:

Leviticus 19:19 (NET): "You must keep my statutes. You must not allow two different kinds of your animals to breed together, you must not sow your field with two different kinds of seed, and you must not wear a garment made of two different kinds of material."

Deuteronomy 22:9-11 (NET): "You must not plant your vineyard with two kinds of seed; otherwise the entire yield, both of the seed you plant and the produce of the vineyard, will be defiled. You must not plow with an ox and a donkey harnessed together. You must not wear clothing made with wool and linen meshed together."

These are likely ideologically motivated, an extrapolation from how Israelites are not supposed to marry foreigners. When the exiled Israelites returned home from Babylon, their leaders broke up marriages of stay-at-homes and foreigners.


Prohibition of mixing meat and milk goes as far as having separate cookware for meat and milk - fleishig and milchig cookware items like pots. Those words are from Yiddish, a German dialect, which is why the words look so a lot like "flesh" and "milk", German Fleisch and Milch. In german Spelling-conventions, all Nouns are capitalized.

 

[lpetrich]

Of the two major offshoots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the former one rejected prohibition of some meats all the way back to when Xianity was some eccentric Jewish sect, as one can find in the New Testament. Like Acts 10,  Peter's vision of a sheet with animals.

But the Catholic Church invented forbidding eating meat on Friday, because Jesus Christ was executed on a Friday. Many Catholics ate fish on that day, however.


Turning to the third major Abrahamic religion, Islam, it forbids only pork.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

<snip>

Pigs don't have any such value when alive. Marvin Harris argues that they are an ecological nuisance in semidesert climates, wallowing in whatever water they can find. So in such places, one can dispense with pigs, and then justify doing so by saying how bad they are.

The nuisance of pigs is not the issue. Pigs can't eat grass or other foliage as cows and goats do. In an arid environment, pigs compete with humans for food. As you said, a pigs only value is its meat consumed as food. That meat is created by food a human could have consumed. It takes about 3 pounds of feed to produce one pound of pork and this is the modern standard. Even though food consumption to produce one pound of beef is four to seven pounds, a lot of that feed is grass.

In an ecology where pigs cannot find wild foods, humans must produce food for them. Using a pig as a middle man in the food chain is an unacceptable inefficiency. In a time when famine and starvation were realistic fears, pig farming can't be tolerated.

Pigs also can ruin scarce springs and other water resources. Which would not make them popular in semi-arid enviroments. The OT declares animals known to scavage as unclean among others. Pigs will scavage dead animals.

 

[lpetrich]

Symbolic Constitutionalism: On Sacred Cows and Abominable Pigs

The article discusses the significance of symbols within constitutional law by analyzing the role of laws introducing traditional national symbols into two legal systems characterized by a mixture of secular and traditional traits—India and Israel. Specifically, it focuses on the legal prohibitions on cattle slaughter in India and on pig growing and pork trading in Israel, animals considered “key symbols” in their respective cultures. Changes in the social and political context emerged as crucial for the legal regulation of these symbols as well as for its durability. Despite the similarities in their starting points, the Indian and the Israeli systems have ultimately taken divergent courses, reflecting differences in their respective contexts and underlying tensions. Whereas Indian cattle slaughter prohibitions are expanding with the constitutional backing of the Indian Supreme Court, pig-related prohibitions in Israel are declining, again with the constitutional backing of the Israeli Supreme Court. The article explains this difference by placing these symbols in a wider social context. Cattle slaughter in India has long been a consistent source of tension with the Muslim community. The basic strain that led to the original legislation, then, remains just as powerful, encouraging the preservation and expansion of laws forbidding cattle slaughter. By contrast, pig prohibitions in Jewish culture developed in the context of persecutions by Greco-Roman rulers and later on in Christian Europe. The “other” against whom this prohibition developed, however, is no longer part of public life in Israel. In addition, the Muslim community in Israel is equally averse to pigs. As time passed, then, the importance of pig prohibitions for Israeli secular Jews within the context of their national identity has declined, and they are currently perceived as a source of tension between secular and religious Jews. Many secular Israelis indeed view the pressure for pig-related legal prohibitions more as a symbol of religious coercion than as a national symbol of identification.

 

[lpetrich]

It's rather curious that many Hindus are doubling down on cow sacredness, including letting cows wander the streets. Not all Hindus, because many Hindus, like lower-caste ones, eat their meat.

• ndia's Sacred Cow by Marvin Harris
• Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | India's Sacred Cows | Season 17 | PBS
• India's Sacred Cows | February 27, 2015 | Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | PBS
• Why the humble cow is India's most polarising animal - BBC News - 15 October 2015
• India’s sacred cows are creating havoc – DW – 12/17/2018 - 12/17/2018 - "The cow is a holy animal for Hindus, with religious zealots ready to take on anyone harming the divine creature. But the growing number of stray cows is proving to be a bane for both Indians and their bovine gods"

From Marvin Harris:

Cow worship is a relatively recent development in India; it evolved as the Hindu religion developed and changed. This evolution is recorded in royal edicts and religious texts written during the last 3,000 years of Indian history. The Vedas from the First Millennium B.C. contain contradictory passages, some referring to ritual slaughter and others to a strict taboo on beef consumption. Many of the sacred-cow passages were incorporated into the texts by priests in a later period.

By 200 A.D. the status of Indian cattle had undergone a transformation. The Brahman priesthood exhorted the population to venerate the cow and forbade them to abuse it or to feed on it. Religious feasts involving the ritual slaughter and consumption of livestock were eliminated and meat eating was restricted to the nobility.

By 1000 A.D., all Hindus were forbidden to eat beef. Ahimsa, the Hindu belief in the unity of all life, was the spiritual justification for this restriction. But it is difficult to ascertain exactly when this change occurred. An important event that helped to shape the modern complex was the Islamic invasion, which took place in the Eighth Century A.D. Hindus may have found it politically expedient to set themselves off from the invaders, who were beefeaters, by emphasizing the need to prevent the slaughter of their sacred animals. Thereafter, the cow taboo assumed its modern form and began to function much as it does today. The place of the cow in modern India is every place - on posters, in the movies, in brass figures, in stone and wood carvings, on the streets, in the fields. The cow is a symbol of health and abundance.

So cow sacredness developed gradually in India, and the earliest Hindu texts, the Vedas, contain an abundance of Satanic Verses: descriptions of cow sacrifices.

 

[lpetrich]

Animal sacrifice is often a slaughter ritual, offering parts of the animals to some deity, while eating what we want to eat of the animal.

Greek mythology contains a justification for offering less-nice parts, the  Trick at Mecone

The gods and mortal humans had arranged a meeting at Mecone where the matter of division of sacrifice between gods and men was to be settled. Prometheus slew a large ox, and divided it into two piles. In one pile he put all the meat and most of the fat, skillfully covering it with the ox's grotesque stomach, while in the other pile, he dressed up the bones artfully with shining fat. Prometheus then invited Zeus to choose; Zeus chose the pile of bones. Hesiod describes Zeus as having seen through the trick, realizing that in purposefully getting tricked he would have an excuse to vent his anger on mortal humans. It may be, however, that in mainstream versions of the story Zeus was actually deceived, and that Hesiod is trying to be pious by changing the story to make Zeus look better.

As an act of revenge, Zeus hid fire from humankind, leaving them cold and shivering at night. Prometheus, however, out of pity stole it for them shortly after, incurring the further wrath of Zeus. Prometheus's punishment was to be chained to a rock and have an eagle (or a vulture by some variants) pick out his liver every day for eons, until Heracles slew the eagle, releasing Prometheus from his affliction. The Theogony text is ambiguous about whether Prometheus was freed or remained chained to the rock, but lines 615-616 are usually interpreted as indicating that he remained bound.

Looking at the Bible, Genesis 8:20-21 (NET) states

Noah built an altar to the Lord. He then took some of every kind of clean animal and clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled the soothing aroma and said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, even though the inclination of their minds is evil from childhood on. I will never again destroy everything that lives, as I have just done."

God likes the smell of burnt offering, it seems.

 

[lpetrich]

It's interesting that the less orthodox and more secular sorts of Jews don't make pig rejection a part of their Jewish identity.

In fact, not only do many secular Israeli Jews eat pork, some Israeli Jews raise pigs there, something that annoys the Orthodox Jewish population there.

The Many Euphemisms for 'Pork' in Israel | MyRecipes - "other thing", "other meat", "white steak", "white meat", "short cow"

 

[Bronzeage]

<snip>

Pigs don't have any such value when alive. Marvin Harris argues that they are an ecological nuisance in semidesert climates, wallowing in whatever water they can find. So in such places, one can dispense with pigs, and then justify doing so by saying how bad they are.

The nuisance of pigs is not the issue. Pigs can't eat grass or other foliage as cows and goats do. In an arid environment, pigs compete with humans for food. As you said, a pigs only value is its meat consumed as food. That meat is created by food a human could have consumed. It takes about 3 pounds of feed to produce one pound of pork and this is the modern standard. Even though food consumption to produce one pound of beef is four to seven pounds, a lot of that feed is grass.

In an ecology where pigs cannot find wild foods, humans must produce food for them. Using a pig as a middle man in the food chain is an unacceptable inefficiency. In a time when famine and starvation were realistic fears, pig farming can't be tolerated.

Pigs also can ruin scarce springs and other water resources. Which would not make them popular in semi-arid enviroments. The OT declares animals known to scavage as unclean among others. Pigs will scavage dead animals.

A pig's diet is not much different from a dog, as far as scavenging is concerned. A dog offers more benefits to people than a pig, so we tolerate them.

Pigs in the water hole is just another symptom of an animal out of its natural environment. Pigs are forest animals. They don't do well in the sun and wallow in mud to keep cool.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

<snip>

Pigs don't have any such value when alive. Marvin Harris argues that they are an ecological nuisance in semidesert climates, wallowing in whatever water they can find. So in such places, one can dispense with pigs, and then justify doing so by saying how bad they are.

The nuisance of pigs is not the issue. Pigs can't eat grass or other foliage as cows and goats do. In an arid environment, pigs compete with humans for food. As you said, a pigs only value is its meat consumed as food. That meat is created by food a human could have consumed. It takes about 3 pounds of feed to produce one pound of pork and this is the modern standard. Even though food consumption to produce one pound of beef is four to seven pounds, a lot of that feed is grass.

In an ecology where pigs cannot find wild foods, humans must produce food for them. Using a pig as a middle man in the food chain is an unacceptable inefficiency. In a time when famine and starvation were realistic fears, pig farming can't be tolerated.

Pigs also can ruin scarce springs and other water resources. Which would not make them popular in semi-arid enviroments. The OT declares animals known to scavage as unclean among others. Pigs will scavage dead animals.

A pig's diet is not much different from a dog, as far as scavenging is concerned. A dog offers more benefits to people than a pig, so we tolerate them.

Pigs in the water hole is just another symptom of an animal out of its natural environment. Pigs are forest animals. They don't do well in the sun and wallow in mud to keep cool.

Israel got its start in the hilltop farms, far from what we think of Israel's location. It was in fact wooded in the lower parts. Much of Israel was woded. Judah was another matter.

 

[Wiploc]

Why do some people believe that cows are too good to eat, and some other people believe that pigs are too bad to eat?

The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig - Google Books by anthropologist Marvin Harris.

I wonder if this book is Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches retitled. I thought it was a fabulous read. I loved Canibals and Kings too.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Why do some people believe that cows are too good to eat, and some other people believe that pigs are too bad to eat?

The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig - Google Books by anthropologist Marvin Harris.

He proposes that the difference is in how much value they have when alive.

Seeing that animism predates anthropomorphized (I almost spelled it right all by myself) deities, it isn't hard to understand how animals can be ingrained so deeply in a culture. It would likely be based on the environment around them and the value or hinderance of the animal. After all, no issues with Kangaroos in Judaism or any of its splinters.

Got to wonder about that rock badger though.

Abram: *walking towards home with killed animals* I'm home!
Ruth: What'd you get? Those better not be rock badgers.
Abram: *stops* *looks at the dead rock badgers* Oh no... totally a different type of badger... a umm... gravel badger.
Ruth: Ah good.

 

[lpetrich]

As far as I can tell, Marvin Harris's books "Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches" and "The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig" are separate books, though the first one discusses some of the subject matter of the second one.

 Cattle in religion and mythology

Many ancient and medieval Hindu texts debate the rationale for a voluntary stop to cow slaughter and the pursuit of vegetarianism as a part of a general abstention from violence against others and all killing of animals.

India's Sacred Cow, by Marvin Harris -- Wayback Machine

The easy explanation for India's devotion to the cow, the one most Westerners and Indians would offer, is that cow worship is an integral part of Hinduism. Religion is somehow good for the soul, even if it sometimes fails the body. Religion orders the cosmos and explains our place in the universe. Religious beliefs, many would claim, have existed for thousands of years and have a life of their own. They are not understandable in scientific terms.

But all this ignores history. There is more to be said for cow worship than is immediately apparent. The earliest Vedas, the Hindu sacred texts from the Second Millennium B.C., do not prohibit the slaughter of cattle. Instead, they ordain it as a part of sacrificial rites. The early Hindus did not avoid the flesh of cows and bulls; they ate it at ceremonial feasts presided over by Brahman priests. Cow worship is a relatively recent development in India; it evolved as the Hindu religion developed and changed.

This evolution is recorded in royal edicts and religious texts written during the last 3,000 years of Indian history. The Vedas from the First Millennium B.C. contain contradictory passages, some referring to ritual slaughter and others to a strict taboo on beef consumption. A. N. Bose, in Social and Rural Economy of Northern India, 600 B.C. -- 200 A.D., concludes that many of the sacred-cow passages were incorporated into the texts by priests of a later period.

By 200 A.D. the status of Indian cattle had undergone a spiritual transformation. The Brahman priesthood exhorted the population to venerate the cow and forbade them to abuse it or to feed on it. Religious feasts involving the ritual slaughter and consumption of livestock were eliminated and meat eating was restricted to the nobility.

By 1000 A.D., all Hindus were forbidden to eat beef. Ahimsa, the Hindu belief in the unity of all life, was the spiritual justification for this restriction. But it is difficult to ascertain exactly when this change occurred. An important event that helped to shape the modern complex was the Islamic invasion, which took place in the Eighth Century A.D. Hindus may have found it politically expedient to set themselves off from the invaders, who were beefeaters, by emphasizing the need to prevent the slaughter of their sacred animals. Thereafter, the cow taboo assumed its modern form and began to function much as it does today.

So cow worship developed gradually, from having a much more typical attitude toward the animals: they were valuable, but they were also good to eat.

 

[lpetrich]

The  Vedas are the oldest Hindu sacred texts, and the oldest of them, Books 2 to 9 of the Rig Veda, date back to 1500 - 1200 BCE, or more broadly, 1700 - 1100 BCE.

Hinduism and its complicated history with cows (and people who eat them)

Sacredness of cows emerged around 2,000 years ago, and eating of beef was common before then.

As I see it, the arguments against eating cows are a combination of a symbolic argument about female purity and docility (symbolized by the cow who generously gives her milk to her calf), a religious argument about Brahmin sanctity (as Brahmins came increasingly to be identified with cows and to be paid by donations of cows) and a way for castes to rise in social ranking.

‘The cow was neither unslayable nor sacred in the Vedic period’ - Frontline - interview with D.N. Jha

His books Holy Cow: Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions (2002) and The Myth of the Holy Cow (2009) drew upon vast historical sources to establish the practice of beef consumption from ancient India onwards, thus dispelling the Hindutva myth that the practice of beef-eating was introduced during Islamic rule in India. His books attracted considerable controversy and Jha also received death threats from Hindu extremists for positing the theory. He explains how popular myths about the cow and beef-eating were systematically etched into the nation’s memory by Hindutva extremists and speaks about their larger political interests in rewriting history.

He does some history:

Cattle sacrifices can be explained in terms of both economic and cultural factors. As you know, the Indo-Aryans migrated to India around the middle of the second millennium B.C. and they brought along with them several traits of Indo-European life, such as pastoralism, incipient agriculture and religious beliefs and practices including the practice of animal/cattle sacrifice. They also brought with them a number of Indo-Iranian gods (e.g., Indra, Agni, Soma, etc.) for whom sacrifices were made. Since sedentary agriculture had yet to develop, the sacrifice of animals—including cattle—met both dietary and sacrificial requirements. Amongst the gods, Indra had a special liking for bulls and buffaloes and amongst men, the respected sage of Mithila, Yajnavalkya, was fond of cow’s flesh.

So the writers of the Vedas were like other early speakers of Indo-European languages, and we can extrapolate that to the speakers of Proto-Indo-European dialects.

DNJ then cites numerous references to killing and eating domestic bovines in early Hindu literature: the Vedas, Upanishads, Brahmanas, ...

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Pigs will scavage dead animals.

Pigs will scavenge live animals, including humans. Cows don't do that.