Working with Pork

As with many cultivated animals, the domestication of wild pigs is believed to have occurred independently in different regions of the world. Anthropological evidence indicates that pigs were being domesticated up to 9,000 years ago in parts of southwestern Asia and China. From this region, it is believed that domesticated pigs—and the use of pork in local cuisine—spread throughout Asia, parts of Polynesia, Indonesia, and Europe. As the major world religions Judaism and Islam grew, their followers in the eastern hemisphere ceased to consume pork products, even as the number of consumers grew in the western hemisphere.