People avoid pork for religious, ethical, health, environmental, and medical reasons. For most of the world’s pork abstainers, the reason is religious law: Islam and Judaism both explicitly prohibit it, and together these two faiths account for roughly a quarter of the global population. But religion is only part of the picture. A growing number of people skip pork because of concerns about animal welfare, parasitic infections, processed meat and cancer risk, or the environmental toll of industrial hog farming.
Religious Prohibitions
The oldest and most widespread reason people don’t eat pork is divine commandment. In Judaism, land animals must meet two criteria to be considered kosher: they must have fully split hooves, and they must chew the cud (a process called rumination, where food is regurgitated and re-chewed for digestion). Pigs have split hooves but do not ruminate. Leviticus 11:3 lays out both requirements, and Deuteronomy 14:8 singles out the pig by name: “the swine, because it divides the hoof but does not chew the cud, it is unclean for you.” The pig is essentially a trick of appearances, possessing one visible sign of a permissible animal while lacking the internal digestive process that would make it truly kosher.
Islam classifies pork as haram (forbidden) with equal clarity. The Quran prohibits it in at least four separate verses, including Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:3: “Forbidden to you are dead meat, blood, the flesh of swine, and that on which has been invoked a name other than that of Allah.” The repetition across multiple chapters underscores the absolute nature of the prohibition. Islamic law does allow a narrow exception: if a person faces starvation and no other food is available, consuming pork is permitted as a matter of survival.
Christianity generally does not prohibit pork, but some denominations do. Seventh-day Adventists follow the dietary distinctions outlined in Leviticus, classifying pork, rabbit, and shellfish as “unclean” meats. The church, founded in 1863, teaches that the body is a holy temple and should be nourished accordingly. Many Adventists go further and follow a fully vegetarian diet. Ethiopian Orthodox Christians also abstain from pork, following their own interpretation of Old Testament food laws.
Parasite and Infection Risks
For centuries, undercooked pork carried a real risk of parasitic infection, and that history still shapes attitudes today. The two parasites most associated with pork are Trichinella spiralis, which causes trichinosis, and the pork tapeworm Taenia solium.
Trichinosis was once common in the United States, but modern farming regulations and cooking guidelines have driven cases down dramatically. The CDC now confirms only about 15 cases per year nationwide, and most of those are linked to wild game (bear, wild boar, walrus) rather than commercially raised pork. Cooking pork to an internal temperature of 145°F effectively kills Trichinella larvae.
The pork tapeworm presents a more nuanced risk. Eating undercooked pork containing tapeworm larvae can cause an intestinal infection called taeniasis, which is generally mild. The more dangerous condition is cysticercosis, where tapeworm eggs (ingested through contaminated food, water, or poor hand hygiene) hatch and larvae migrate through the body, forming cysts in muscle, skin, and other tissues. If cysts reach the brain, the result is neurocysticercosis, which can cause seizures and, in rare cases, sudden death. Cysticercosis remains a significant public health concern in parts of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia where sanitation infrastructure is limited and pigs are raised in close contact with humans.
Processed Pork and Cancer Risk
Many of the most popular pork products are processed: bacon, ham, sausages, hot dogs. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen, meaning there is sufficient evidence that it causes cancer in humans. The strongest link is to colorectal cancer. Group 1 is the same classification given to tobacco smoking and asbestos, though that refers to the strength of the evidence, not the degree of risk. Still, regular consumption of processed meat does measurably increase colorectal cancer risk, and for people trying to lower that risk, cutting out processed pork products is one of the most straightforward changes.
This classification applies to all processed meat, not just pork. But because pork dominates the processed meat category (bacon, prosciutto, pepperoni, many sausages and hot dogs), it bears the brunt of the concern.
Ethical Objections and Pig Intelligence
Pigs are among the most cognitively complex animals raised for food. Research compiled by neuroscientist Lori Marino found that pigs possess ethological traits comparable to dogs and chimpanzees. They have excellent long-term memories, navigate mazes with ease, and can learn to manipulate a joystick to move an on-screen cursor. They use mirrors to locate hidden food, a test of self-awareness that many animals fail. They live in complex social groups, keep track of individuals, and show signs of tactical deception, a hallmark of what researchers call Machiavellian intelligence. They also display a form of empathy, responding emotionally when they witness distress in another pig.
For people who draw ethical lines based on an animal’s capacity for suffering and social awareness, this body of evidence makes pork particularly difficult to justify. The comparison to dogs is especially potent in Western cultures, where dogs are family members and pigs are breakfast. That contradiction drives many people toward reducing or eliminating pork from their diets, even if they continue eating other meats.
Environmental Impact of Hog Farming
Industrial hog operations produce staggering volumes of waste. In North Carolina alone, the fecal waste generated by commercially raised hogs exceeds the waste produced by the state’s entire human population. That waste is typically collected in massive open-air lagoons, then sprayed onto nearby fields as fertilizer. The land often cannot absorb the volume of manure applied to it, and the overflow contaminates local air and water supplies with pathogens, nitrates, and ammonia.
Communities near these operations, which are disproportionately low-income and communities of color, report higher rates of respiratory problems and gastrointestinal illness. The ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emissions from waste lagoons create a persistent odor that can make outdoor activity unbearable for nearby residents. For people motivated by environmental or environmental justice concerns, avoiding pork is a way to withdraw financial support from an industry they see as causing outsized harm relative to other forms of agriculture.
Alpha-Gal Syndrome
Some people can’t eat pork even if they want to. Alpha-gal syndrome is an allergic condition triggered by tick bites, most commonly from the Lone Star tick in the United States. The tick’s saliva contains a sugar molecule called alpha-gal, which is also found naturally in the tissues of all non-primate mammals, including pigs, cows, and sheep. Repeated tick bites can reprogram the immune system to produce antibodies against alpha-gal. When a sensitized person later eats mammalian meat, those antibodies trigger an allergic reaction.
What makes alpha-gal syndrome unusual among food allergies is the delay: symptoms typically appear three to six hours after eating, rather than within minutes. This makes it notoriously difficult to diagnose, since most people don’t connect a middle-of-the-night reaction to the pork chop they had at dinner. Reactions range from hives and gastrointestinal distress to full anaphylaxis. Cases have been rising steadily in the southeastern United States and other regions where Lone Star ticks are expanding their range.