I do see your point. My post was not an effort to be completely logical, but AN 3.39, which I cited, mentions the Buddha’s recollections of meat and rice being served as a high end meal. It seemed relevant to me in that a meal prepared for the Buddha should or might include meat. There’s some logic in that, and what is logical for modern Japan may or not be relevant to what was the custom in 5th century BCE. In any case, thanks for your comment Justin; food for thought. My post was largely a way to side door some silly humor about blacksmiths trying to be chefs. Poor Cunda; I’m just glad the Buddha praised the poor fellow after the fact. Can you imagine the ignominy for blacksmiths through history had the Buddha not absolved Cunda? Picture a medieval smithy invited to a potluck dinner. “Hey, Smithy, no worries, you just bring the Pepsi!” 
Jainism and meat-eating is discussed (with copious citations) in The Myth of the Holy Cow (pp. 72-89) by the historian D.N. Jha. But the citation he gives for the cockerel-killed-by-a-cat story is from a secondary source: Basham’s book on the Ājīvikas.
Jain responses to Prof. Jha (often pretty irate!) can be found on numerous websites by googling Mahavira and cockerel (or kukkuṭa maṃsa).
Well , Assuming it was
pork meat , there is few things
seems strange or rather peculiar
about it one don’t catch .
-
Why " Mamsa " didn’t get into
the picture , Isn’t that a
precise word ?
Sukara Mamsa , pork meat ?
A straight forward one . -
Does the meat came from
slaughtering ? by whom ?
Buddha and the disciples
came in with sudden ,
where can Cunda get so much
Tender pork meat in
such a short notice ?
from the " market " I wonder ?
I can’t imagined back then they
had " cold storage " or
something like fridge ?
They had to slaughter it
immediately at once
otherwise the meat can
get " Not Tender " huh !!!
If it was leftover or overnight
pork meat , it ain’t so
Tender anymore ! Maddava !
It initially seems absurd to argue that kukkuṭamaṁsa is anything other than meat. But then you find that Mahakukkutamamsa Tailam is an Ayurvedic oil, used for both oral administration and external application. 
People call food all kinds of odd names. Ketchup is catsup, but it is not a soup made out of cats! Etymologically it’s from a word for fish sauce, but there’s no fish in it either.[quote=“James, post:45, topic:5762”]
where can Cunda get so much Tender pork meat in such a short notice ? from the " market "
[/quote]
Yes.
[quote=“sujato, post:46, topic:5762, full:true”]
People call food all kinds of odd names. Ketchup is catsup, but it is not a soup made out of cats! Etymologically it’s from a word for fish sauce, but there’s no fish in it either.[/quote]
Yes, and, oddly enough, the term (and the condiment) originate in South-East Asia, likely not unknown to Buddhists there.
"Ketchup and catsup are simply two different spellings for the same thing, a modern, Westernized version of a condiment that European traders were introduced to while visiting the Far East in the late 17th century. What exactly that condiment was and where they found it is a matter of debate.
It could have been ke-chiap from China’s southern coastal Fujian region or it could have been kicap (a Malay word borrowed from the Cantonese dialect of Chinese, also spelled kecapand ketjap) from Indonesia, both of which are sauces based on brined or pickled fish or shellfish, herbs and spices. Whatever it was, the Europeans liked it, and as early 1690, they brought it back home with them, calling it catchup."
(http://mentalfloss.com/article/29649/whats-difference-between-ketchup-and-catsup)
Fish sauces like that are readily available in Chinese, Vietnamese, etc. groceries around here (SF area Calif; no doubt also in Australia), and s/t on the table in local Thai restaurants.
And I can imagine with depressing predictability the struggles of linguists of the future, faced with a couple of obscure references to this exotic condiment. “It’s catsup, which is obviously just an abbreviated ‘cat soup’. But then, it seems also to be ‘fish sauce’. Hmm … Well, cats eat fish, so maybe it’s a soup made of out something that cats like to eat? That must be it!”
Meanwhile, if only everyone was as sensible as Australians, there would be no problem. Tomato sauce it is and ever was!
Begging pardon for the off-topic here, but it serves to freshen my memory of having run-out of Ketchup yesterday, and to put it on the shopping list.
(The Asian fish-sauce, to my taste, is more along the lines of an asuba contemplation.)
Wow , then there is no pork meat
in the tender pig, could it be ?
Kicap & catsup, ketchup all came
from Chinese name 茄汁
which is tomatoes sauce .
Ke ＝ 茄 ＝ tomatoes
Chup = 汁 ＝ sauce
But later it developed
into varieties of sauces.
It was in Cantonese dialect
from Canton in Guangzhou China.
My friend was in the sauces business.
Anyway , another strange thing ,
If the pork was a tender one ,
Why then even the ascetics,
brahmana , Gods and the
rest can’t digest it ?
Of course , the gods and
brahmins do not take meat .
And if the pork wasn’t poisonous
why Buddha want Cunda
to hide it under the soil ?
And how come the tender
pork meat so poisonous ?
I would be happt to. I believe it is in the Vyākhyāprajñapti (seems to be also known as the Bhagavatī Sūtra) of the Śvētāmbara tradition. Sorry that I can’t be more specific than that. I don’t have the text.
Apparently Mahavira was in a dispute and a guy (Gosāla) cursed him (with yogic heat I think), to die within 6 months from fever. Interestingly it seems that Mahavira reflected the magic back to this guy and he died soon after (interesting for somone who was supposed to be dedicated to non-violence). But he still became sick from it.
He needed medication and if I have the story right, a lay woman was going to cook a couple of pigeons for him but he got his disciples to stop her and get a chicken which had been recently killed by a cat instead. Now, that makes perfect sense for a samana who needed meat as a cure, since it would not be causing any death, right?
Padmanabh S. Jaini in ‘The Jaina Path of Purification’ comments on this episode. Sorry that the OCR is not very good:
MahavTra sent him to procure a particular medicinal substance which would undo the harmful effects of Gosala’s attack. The substance in question is called kukkuta-rnarnsa, which ordinarily refers to the flesh of a chicken. But no Jaina can accept the idea of even an ordinary mendicant consuming meat, regardless of circumstances; to suggest that a Jina might have done so is nothing less than blasphemous. The Svclam-. bara commentators have therefore gone to great pains to show that the term kukkuta-maiTisa here refers not to meat at all but to the flesh of a certain seed-filled fruit (called bijapuraka-kataha, perhaps Aegle in Marmelos, or hel-phctf Hindi) commonly used for medical purposes (to treat dehydration;) such animal’ terminology for an herbal substance is often found, for example, in the Ayurveda The fact that this term was not suppressed or eliminated from the literature long ago supports their interpretation; those commentators closest in time to the original text must have assumed that there would be no danger of misunderstanding. Indeed, it was not until the 1941 publication of Dharma-
nanda KosambVs Bhagavati Buddha (in Marathi) that anyone (in India) even suggested the possibility of taking kukku(a-mamsa as actual flesh. The controversy raised among Jainas by Kosambi’s rernarks was of course restricted to the Svetambara community; Digambaras, who deny that a kevalin eats anything at all (see below, n. 83), found the entire issue irrelevant.
The controversial passage appears as follows in the BhS: xv (Vaidya cd.,
p. 34.); lam no kh^alu aham Slha . kalarp karessam: aharp nam annairp sola-savassaim suhatthi viharissami. taip gacchaha nam tumarp STha, Mepdhi-yagamarn nayararp. Revaie gahnvainie gihe. lattha narp RevaTe mamaip atthae duve kavoyasarTra uvakkhadiya. lehirp no altho. allhi se anne pariyasic ‘“’^Sharahi, ecnaaa aUVio. ITtf jt- (‘marjaro" virala-bhidhanako vanaspativisejas tena "krlairi’’ blravitam yat (at lalhS, kiip tat? ity ™’‘‘^“l3manisakaiTi’ bijapurakam kalahaip, “aharahitti” niravadyatvSd 111 ) Abhai/adevasttri-vrttI (quoted in Vaidya cd., p. 66).
Note his reasoning why it can’t be meat, even though the term clearly “ordinarily refers to the flesh of a chicken”. 1) It can’t be meat because Jains now consider that blasphemy to say that it was meat. 2) Now people believe this normal meat term to in that context have refered to non-meat. 3) The term was not eliminated by the people who preserved the tradition, so, it can’t be meat (because that would go against the belief of the people who preserved the texts - at least, those of them who would take that as heretical, or even since the tradition has taken this to be heretical). 4) The other tradition that says he didn’t eat anything at all, so it can’t be true either way.
Not very sound reasoning.
Perhaps necessary to go more deeply into the text to see where a ‘fruit called chicken’ being substituted for 2 pigoens; and a ‘fruit called chicken’ being killed by a cat, can be explained away!
I know Prof Gombrich is of the opinion that it is clearly about meat.
It seems to me that the Jains and Buddhists both, at least at that early time, may have had similar attitudes about meat. That it is not impure in itself (as some Hindus may feel), and so we need not refrain from eating it on that basis - but we should not cause harm or death. Hence this already killed chicken was fine to eat. I was under the impression that this may have been a samana standard.
The post about this thread was marked as “spam” by Facebook.
I tried to tell them it’s not spam, but pork. 
Spam - that’s a word for a kind of vegetarian sandwich filling, right? 
I just re-read this sutta last night. I do work in the medical field (pathology, appropriately enough), and it does seem entirely possible to me he had food poisoning. The time frame is not incompatible with that. But I do agree the the Buddha was already by his own admission in a bad state where something like eating spoiled food (which was probably frequent in the Buddha’s time) could be the “last straw”. I can’t begin to imagine the number of food and water bourne diseases that were common at that time which could lead to this sort of situation in an elderly man.