Title pretty much says it all. Assuming it’s prepared in the proper way, could human meat be permissable?
I am not an expert, but I would suspect not. Corpses are ritually impure, and coming into contact with them in any way usually involves a number of precautions. I don’t think a fork and knife would mitigate those. At the very least, to be halal, the person would have to be killed the right way, and murder is generally frowned upon in Islam.
In order to properly answer your question, I think we’d have to know whether apes could be made kosher or halal. Can they?
In one special case, yes.
The human body is always parve to itself. If you cut yourself and suck on the blood (why do people do that?) you are not breaking any religious law.
Humans do not have cloven hoofs and do not chew their cud.
Since humans don’t have cloven hoofs, and (most) don’t chew the cud, they would not be kosher. Neither would apes or other primates.
Halal regulations are less explicit, but certainly human meat could not be considered to be halal.
See C K Dexter Haven’s Staff Report on comparisons between kosher and halal for further information.
I don’t know enough about Islam to comment on Halal, but here’s the Straight Dope about kosher: Humans are not considered animals, and therefore, the human body is not unkosher. Therefore, as Paul said, one could suck the blood from one’s own wound, and breastmilk is pareve (i.e., if it would happen to somehow get mixed into kosher meat, if would not cause the problems that cow’s milk would cause).
That said, there are other prohibitions involved. Most obviously, slaughtering humans, even if done in a way which which be kosher for a cow, just just coincidentally happen to constitute murder.
In addition, there’s a general prohibition against doing things that are considered disgusting, and if I’m not mistaken, that includes drinking blood which has already been collected into a container, and perhaps even if collected on the surface of the skin, but not when sucked directly from the wound.
There’s also a prohibition against using a dead human body for any personal benefit, and that would include eating it. So even if a person dies of natural causes, a Jew still cannot eat that flesh. But it is a law distinct from the kosher laws, so if such flesh would happen to contact one’s pots or dishes, it would not cause the problems which pork would cause.
Although Dr. Drake is correct that corpses are ritually impure, that is yet another class of laws which are distinct from the kosher laws. That category was relevant mostly during times when Solomon’s Temple existed. A ritually impure person was unable to bring sacrifices, for example. This is relatively irrelevant nowadays.
What I meant by that is this: Although the observation made by Lemur866 and Colibri (that humans do not have cloven hooves and do not chew their cud) is accurate, it is also irrelevant. That requirement only applies to animals. Humans are not animals, and so the lack of cloven hooves or cud does not render humans nonkosher.