The fact that laws like the Noahide laws or the Sabbath were given before the Law was given to Moses at Mt. Sinai makes it perfectly reasonable that God had given other commands before then as well. How did Abraham know how to walk before God blamelessly? Or for that matter, how did Noah know how to act righteously and blamelessly? The easy answer is that Noah knew about the distinction between clean and unclean animals because God had either told him or told someone else who told him. Why would God command him to make that distinction on the ark if Noah didn't already know the difference?
Furthermore, I think there exists the possibility for obvious exceptions to food. If you tell a guest that they are free to eat anything in your fridge, did you give them permission to eat your tupperware and shelves, or are those an obvious exception that didn't need to be mentioned? If you came upon roadkill swarming with flies, do you acknowledge it could be eaten, yet agree that it is in a different category from what you normally consider to be food? The same goes for animals like bats, snakes, lizards, or vultures or with plants like poison ivy. As such, it could easily have been that unclean animals were known as an obvious exception to the other animals that were given to Noah as food.
ETA:
There are also some Jews that hold that the Torah preexisted the creation of the world and was sort of like the blueprint that God use to create it.
Furthermore, I think there exists the possibility for obvious exceptions to food. If you tell a guest that they are free to eat anything in your fridge, did you give them permission to eat your tupperware and shelves, or are those an obvious exception that didn't need to be mentioned? If you came upon roadkill swarming with flies, do you acknowledge it could be eaten, yet agree that it is in a different category from what you normally consider to be food? The same goes for animals like bats, snakes, lizards, or vultures or with plants like poison ivy. As such, it could easily have been that unclean animals were known as an obvious exception to the other animals that were given to Noah as food.
ETA:
There are also some Jews that hold that the Torah preexisted the creation of the world and was sort of like the blueprint that God use to create it.
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