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Unclean Meats and the Refrigerator

Some of our greatest religions forbid the eating of certain meats as "unclean". Let us explore what that means.

In early times, going back perhaps to prehistory, the idea became common that if you suffered misfortune, it was your punishment for having done something wrong. The way to improve your lot was to live a pious and conscientious life in thought, word and deed. You propitiated your gods or your ancestors and when that didn't work well you might have developed either a complex pantheon of capricious spirits or a doctrine of reincarnation in which your misfortunes were down to bad acts in a previous life - or why not both.

Illness is a common misfortune and was therefore put down to one's own sins. It was clear enough that people who lived a physically clean life suffered less than those who lived in stink and squalor. A clean life therefore appeared to be a pious life and "unclean" became a synonym for immoral: cleanliness was put next to godliness.

Other related words gained double meaning. "Bad" applied as equally to meat that would make you ill as to an act which would bring down misfortune. Eating that meat was just such an act and the resultant food poisoning was just such a misfortune. Such meat was therefore clearly "unclean", in both the physical and moral senses of the word since there was no distinction between the two.

All meats go bad when kept for long enough, but some begin by improving and softening - beef, mutton and game birds especially - and your nose is a pretty good guide to when they go over the top. Even then, eating those that have over-ripened will give you little more than a dose of the runs. But some meats are downright dangerous because they attract bacteria such as Salmonella and there may be no accompanying warning smell. They have to be treated properly and eaten soon or they can kill. The two commonest are pork and chicken. Shellfish too may go "off" very quickly or may simply have eaten something poisonous to humans.

Problems arose in the market place where you went to buy your meat. For most meats you were guided by sight and smell. Chickens were dealt with by keeping them alive until you started preparing the meal. But pork or shellfish - even if the butcher and the fishmonger could be relied upon, there was no way of telling whether the meat was safe, in fact in hot climates it probably wasn't, it was "unclean".

So if you lived in a hot climate and traded meats with other people, pork was unclean meat and should not be eaten. If you also lived near open water, shellfish were similarly unclean. The same applied to many body parts or "offal" from all animals. And of course that meant that eating them was not only stupid but a sin. The uncleanness was by definition theological as much as physical, for there was no distinction.

And so the litany of unclean foods naturally found its way into the religious ideas and pronouncements of the culture.

Indeed, over the generations the physical origin began to be forgotten and as cultures spread to other climes their ideas of un-cleanness made little physical sense. The religious morality could not be challenged and so the language of "unclean" became associated more and more with the pious lifestyle than with the original physical danger.

By the time of the Buddha, hundreds of years BC, it was possible for a holy man to live in unwashed squalor and to claim - not without controversy - that his spiritual cleanliness triumphed over his unclean physical state.

And so today we find the dictates of Halal and Kosher, as applied to foods, widespread around a world in whose varied climes their original meaning has been long forgotten and they are obeyed only as a matter of instruction and faith.

Nor is it only cooler climates that have brought this obsolescence of physical need. The refrigerator too has wrought its own marvels - even in the hottest of countries pork, chicken and shellfish may be safely stored and traded.

Of course, the trustfulness of the seller remains an issue: poor hygiene in handling or slow sales can still render our meats unclean. Modern Western countries have endless regulations and penalties against poor handling. But my favourite is our new phrase for unclean; "past its sell-by date". Don't laugh (well, only ruefully because you missed it until now), that is exactly what "past its sell-by date" means - the Authorities have deemed the food unclean in the old sense of the word and it should be neithet sold as food nor eaten.

The dictates of the ancient Prophets and Wise were expressed in a language born of heat and simplicity. It is my hope that religious authorities around the world will take on board the physical origin of un-cleanliness and will reinterpret those dictates for the new world of refrigerators and the germ theory of disease.

Updated 11 June 2016