Dear Bazz,

"Unclean" is not necessary about physical cleanliness, or about the derived health hazard. If you look at the dictionary, "unclean" also means "morally wrong", "morally defiled", "ceremoniously impure", "morally or spiritually impure", etc. It is derived from the biblical Hebrew word, 'Tame`', which has no exact English equivalent, but could be translated as both 'impure' and 'filthy'.

I suppose that the first mutton that I ate was killed in the approved manner for Muslims.
The local butcher simply slit the sheep's throat or rather stuck and cut from the inside as the wool impedes the blade, then the sheep was hung to bleed out.
The butcher used a different technique with cattle, he first shot a beast in the head with his revolver then lifted the carcass with a block and tackle in an A frame at the corner of the paddock.

Gutting was done in the field, then the meat and salable offal thrown onto a bit of canvas in the back of a light wagon (pulled by one horse) and taken into town to the shop.
Of necessity killing was done early in the morning, there being no refrigeration.

I was six and on my way home from school, when I first saw a sheep's throat cut; the men were killing badly injured animals that had just been taken off a train at Uralla (NSW) railway stockyards.

Hmmm Yuyutsu, a bit umm well maybe isn't it ?
Surely they originally meant not clean ie dirty covered in bacteria if
they had known about bacteria.
I believe they knew it was bad for health, the Rabbis realised the
connection between eating the pork and the illness the people suffered.
Could be they got sick same time each year when they were able to buy pork.

It could not have been what God wanted so they made it a rule.
Our doctors made many similar conclusions over the centuries.
I went to an agricultural high school and I think that was where I
first heard of the suggestion.
We had a couple of classes a week on animal husbandry.

Jews in the first century who became followers of Jesus Christ had the conflict of kosher food and the Council at Jerusalem [Acts 15] decided that Christians were to abstain from food dedicated to idols, from meat from strangled animals, and from consuming blood. However Paul a former devout Jew often ate food from the market place asking no questions for conscience sake.

Muslims in isolated communities in Indonesia often eat pork in mixed community celebrations.

The fact is if food is qualified suitable for human consumption that should be sufficient certification. The ancient belief that some foods are unclean needs to be clarified as to the reason. A religious belief by a section of the community should not be imposed upon the whole society

Yuyutsu,
I just remembered that the Jews have a custom of having
separate kitchens or parts of kitchens for different types of foods as
part of the Kosher regime.
This it seems to me to be an acknowledgement of the existence of
bacteria even if they had no idea what was the actual cause.
It was therefore "unclean" to have meat and vegetables and milk
products in contact or on the same surfaces.
It was an attempt to avoid cross contamination and food poisoning.
It became religious text based on unknown science.

That is what the moslem thing about pigs & their meat is all about.

Dear Josephus,

You wrote;

“The fact is if food is qualified suitable for human consumption that should be sufficient certification. The ancient belief that some foods are unclean needs to be clarified as to the reason. A religious belief by a section of the community should not be imposed upon the whole society.”

If you are indeed attempting to be consistent then I can only applaud the effort.

In light of this can I ask your opinion of the following excerpt from an end of year report from Kosher Australia, one of the entities I mentioned earlier;

“In 2013 we once again experienced another year of expansion in all areas of Kosher Australia’s activities. Almost every week the office receives an enquiry or indeed multiple enquiries from manufacturers for certification. Each enquiry is carefully examined in order to determine whether the granting of certification is possible. The central platform of Kosher Australia is to whenever halachically possible to grant certification to as many products as possible in order to give the consumer the widest choice of food and the ability to purchase those products from as many shops, beyond the Caulfield/East St Kilda area.”

“Last year I reported on the programme initiated by Coles supermarkets whereby our symbol was placed on the shelves next to the price tag in order to indicate that the marked product was kosher according to our list. After carefully monitoring the programme, we met again with Coles in order to modify the programme to minimize the accidental errors in the display of our symbol against products which are not on our list. Coles has been and remains a very strong supporter of the kosher community and I am pleased to record that Coles took on board our suggested changes. There has been an overwhelming positive response by consumers to the programme, acknowledging that this initiative was making shopping easier.”