Many languages have two words for the more carnal, and the product. My language makes a difference between the word for muscle and the word for meat. Some languages do not, such as Arabic where it is the same. My language only makes a difference between pig and pork, and cow and beef. All the other animals one eats have the same names as food.

The reason the English languages can go to an extreme with this is that it has two sets of words, the French influence was immense (and French comes from latin), so you have the Latin based words and the Germanic based words.

Since the Latin based words came later and in a context that meant culture, those words came to mean the finer thing, or the finer way to say something.

Pork and beef are from French words, so is poultry and mutton. The name of the animal itself is often Germanic, the word for swine even appears in proto-Germanic as swinan, so it has been there forever. Farm animal names are usually VERY old.

You can sometimes guess what word is the Germanic and what is the Latin based word because the snootier it sounds, the bigger chance it is Latin based.

buy - purchase
belly - abdomen
main - primary
holy - sacred
go on - proceed
work - labour
wild - feral