A strangely prescient thread. Since midnight, the BBC news channel has been running a story about Malaysian muslims and their fear of touching dogs, which is proscribed except under certain circumstances, like rescuing the animal from danger.
This seems to tally with naillit's experience with walking his dog.
I wondered whether the biblical era ban on pork was to do with the risks of tapeworm which is passed to humans via cysts in pig muscle (modern farming techniques prevent this, of course).
On a more mischievous level I wondered if it was more to do with these religions being those of goatherds and shepherds, who wanted to promote their meat and drive pig farmers out of business ;-)
In fact, if the levant/desert environment is so unsuitable for boar/pigs, I'd be interested to know how they came to be known to the old testament peoples, who wrote the bible, or what is the oldest arcaeological evidence of pigs being eaten in the levant, the fertile crescent and north Africa?
Meanwhile, meat sold unrefrigerated from a street stall and exposed to everything from traffic fumes to flies crawling over it is deemed to be clean.