: For Some, Halal Meat Is Too Hard To Swallow

Muslims in America and Europe who wish to keep their diets halal with meat slaughtered ritually (similar to Jewish shechita or kosher rules) have until recently had a difficult time. Unless you lived in areas of heavy Muslim concentration, it was difficult to get fresh halal meat, so you had to settle for the canned stuff, eat kosher meat, or go veggie. But the market has grown considerably over the last decade, with the halal meat industry now bringing in over $12 billion in revenue in the US alone. That fact has a lot of Muslims happily munching on halal kababs, but some people aren’t too happy about it. In the UK, where halal meat comprises 25% of all lamb and 7% of all chicken, a government commission is about to conclude that Muslim and Jewish methods of slaughter are inhumane, mainly because ritual slaughter does not include stunning the animal first. “The rendering of unconsciousness [through stunning] is a very immediate thing that happens,” says Dr. MacArthur Clark, chairwoman of the Farm Animal Welfare Council, “therefore those animals are clearly suffering far far less.” Understandably, Muslim groups in the UK aren’t too happy about the move, coming so soon after their concerns over war with Iraq were brushed aside. “We oppose it from a legal point, from a religious point, from a health and medical point and from an animal welfare point,” said a spokesperson from the Muslim Council of Britain. Here in the US, plans for a major Muslim slaughterhouse in Minnesota are on hold due to intense opposition from neighbors. “We have 250 slaughter plants in the state and I don’t know of one that has had to go through what this guy has,” said Kevin Elfering of Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture. County Zoning Commissioner Trent McCorkell received a phone call complaining about members of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Muslim community coming to the slaughterhouse that explained, “We don’t want that kind of person here.” The more roadblocks that are put in front of halal meat slaughter in the US and UK, the better for countries like Canada who are eager to serve the Muslim market – about 20% of all Canadian beef produced for export is halal.

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.