Re this thread on Peccaries, they are apparently a few evolutionary stages and millions of years removed from domesticated swine. Since they’re not “real” pigs would they be kosher to eat?
The dietary laws prohibit consuming animals that 1) do not have cloven hooves; and 2) do not chew the cud. Although peccaries have cloven hooves, they, like true pigs, do not chew the cud, and thus would be prohibited.
In more detail:
Curse you, Colibri.
To be fair, it’s my understanding that such criteria were laid out specifically in order to exclude swine. Their non-ruminance was not objectionable of itself, IOW; it was just a convenient distinguishing trait.
Like the milk/cheese thing: this rule was meant to avoid the possibility of stewing a kid (read: juvie goat) in its own mother’s milk. In order to exclude any such possibility, the rabbis that be outlawed putting ANY meat in ANY milk. (Also, my theory, because a little bit of kowtowing to arbitrary rules is an age-old device for maintaining power over others.) Thus, even though it wasn’t the original intention of the proscription, you can’t even eat chicken parmesan.
Of course you’re correct, Col; don’t mean to suggest otherwise. I just find it interesting how the letter of Talmudic law has come to differ, in some cases, from its spirit.
I am also amused that this OP fits the “Questions about Judaism may only be asked between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday” Rule.
OT: I can’t help but point out Zev’s 614th Mitzvah:
Questions about Judaism, particularly Orthodox rituals, customs and beliefs, will be posted between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday.
Anyhow, all Kosher animals are in the ruminanta suborder of the artiodactyla order. Peccaries are in the suina suborder, and thus not Kosher. Especially with bacon and extra cheese, served on a Saturday afternoon.
And I’m the trifecta.
I came in this thread with the ‘why always on Saturday?’ question in my mind.
However, not all ruminants are kosher, in particular camels. Interestingly, the Koran, while keeping most of the Judaic dietary laws, permits camels to be eaten.
And the always helpful Google ads offer a selection of pig meat orderable online! 
The substantive reason I posted to this is two questions that come to mind:
Tylopods – camels and llamas – do chew their cud and have cloven hooves, but are not true ruminants. Are they considered kosher? (I’m visualizing a kosher llama knackery in Lima.)
There was a bunch of stuff in the news a few years ago about the babirusa, the Sulawesi pig that apparently independently developed cud-chewing characteristics, or something of the sort, relative to whether it’s kosher or traife. (Seems to me it was ruled unclean.) Does anyone have any info on that?
What’s not kosher about camels? They are, as you note, ruminants, and I’m quite certain that they have cloven hooves.
They are, however, mentioned specifically in the passage someone quoted. Whether they’re ruminants or not doesn’t matter if the Big Guy has specifically said, “No can do.”
Although I have to admit, camels certainly do seem to part the hoof. Looks like another “bats are birds” thing…
Moses was not a taxonomist. Camels have cloven feet, not hooves. The bottom of the foot is composed of a leathery pad, rather than a horny hoof. This is rather different than cattle and sheep, in which it appears that the hoof itself is divided - the animal walks on the horny bottoms of the hooves. So although camels are cloven-footed, and chew the cud, they are excluded because the foot is not composed of an apparently “split” hoof. See my second post.
Given that the underside of a llama’s foot is also composed of this kind of pad (although not as obvious as it is in camels) I would guess that llamas also might not be kosher.
And again, yes, true; but kosher laws are not about feet. That is, OK, technically, they’re about feet. But that’s a technicality, arrived at after the fact. It’s basically eqivalent to “Because I’m the mom.”
Yes, of course the Mosaic dietary laws were formulated in order to include or exclude certain animals of the Middle East well-known to the Jews. But of course today, having been “written in stone,” so to speak, they could be, and no doubt have been, used to classify animals that Moses had no knowledge of. And that’s what we are talking about here.
Goody; now I can ask the question that’s been bothering me (but not so much that I bothered to actually find the answer):
Someone told me that technically, Giraffes are kosher (assuming, of course, that they are slaughtered properly). Yea or nay?