Pork

Pork is a collective term for the parts suitable for consumption of the domestic pig. In Europe and East Asia pork is the most widely eaten meat.

Production

The domestic pig is one of the longest domesticated pets in the history of human civilization and is held almost exclusively for meat production. As omnivores, it was formerly used also for recycling of kitchen waste, this is now prohibited in many countries for reasons of hygiene. In rural areas, pigs are still sometimes held outside of farms, and through restrictions on the slaughter house but these are exceptions. Today comes about half the world's pork produced from intensive livestock production.

Export and Import

Germany had an export surplus of 607 thousand tons of pork in 2010. ( Imports of pork stood at 972 thousand tons, the export amounted to 1,578 thousand tons of meat. ) Were imported to Germany for fattening ( the bulk from the Netherlands and Denmark) and 2.6 million animals exported 13.9 million live pigs.

Consumption

In the years 1998 to 2007, the global pork consumption was moving at a relatively constant level of 15 kg per capita per year. In 1961 he was still at 8 kg. Most of the meat consumed in 2007 the Austrians at 66 kilograms per head.

Religious pork bans

In Judaism, Islam and in some Christian denominations such as the Seventh- day Adventist Church, the consumption of pork is forbidden:

" All animals have split hooves, are Paarzeher and ruminate dürft, eat. [ ... ] You shall unclean to the boar that while it has split hooves and Paarzeher is, but not the cud. You must not eat of their flesh nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you. "

" He has forbidden you only ( the enjoyment of ) course, dead meat, blood, pork, and that on which any other than Allah has been invoked. But if someone ( to ) is forced, without (it) to lust after, and without exceeding the amount so he is not at fault; Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. "

At least since the 12th century it was attempted bans with the " unclean " to justify life of pigs, such as occurs in non- fair attitude. Thus wrote Maimonides, a Jewish physician to the Sultan Saladin: "If the law prohibits the pork, so especially because the habits and food of the animal are very dirty and disgusting. [ ... ] The mouth of a pig is as dirty as the feces itself " A scientific explanation from the 19th century assumed as the reason another " impurity ", the transmission of trichinosis by not fully cooked pork. However, since other animals raw meat can transmit serious diseases, this explanation is unlikely.

A modern explanation of Marvin Harris is based on ecological and economic factors. In the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, the formerly vast forests were in the period around 2000 BC by logging, erosion and enlargement of arable land to only small residual back. This lost the pigs in oak and beech forests, food, shade and moist mud found to wallow until then ( they have no sweat glands ), their ecological niche and became competitors for food of man, who had cereal and just become water are supplied need. Instead of pigs, which were difficult no longer hold under the changed conditions of life and profitable and had to roll through the water shortage in their feces, the keeping of cattle, sheep and goats continued by posing as ruminants of indigestible for people Plants are feed and better adapted to heat and lack of water. At this time, the consumption of pork began increasingly frowned upon and to be occupied with religious prohibitions, as in Phoenicia, Babylon and Egypt, and later with the Jews and finally the Muslims.