To be confused by the Halal meat thing.

[LEMmingaround]

I don't understand why this is a problem. 90% of the animals are stunned before they are killed anyway - so what is the problem?

I do think it should be labelled as there are some religeons (sihks i think) for who this would be a problem but people getting upset over halal meat served in subway/pizza express? REALLY? To me it just sounds like an excuse for prejudice. Those people quite happy to eat the meat from there tht is not halal and probably don't give a flying fuck what happened to the animals during their lives or at their slaughter. If you were tht worried about that sort of thing you would a) be vegetarian/vegan or b) only ever eat meat that you knew where it came from and that was treated properly. Am i being niave that thinking that having to respect and pray for an animal at slaughter (even if the slaughter is not pleasant) that they may well have good welfare standards? Most of the meat you get from TEsco comes from the EU and the standards don't meat the UK standards for living conditions.

Antiquated customs like the insistence exclusively on the Hadith version of halal meat only serve to entrench that fundamentalism. They should be rooted out and consigned to the dustbin of history. They have no place in a modern British society, where Muslims wish to be fully integrated and part of the UK mainstream

Very interesting article and very enlightening about this Hadith version.

And there is a Koranic commandmant that the animal must be drained of blood — although nothing to say that this should be done while the poor beast is still living.

Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2623879/We-Muslims-appalled-sale-halal-meat-stealth.html#ixzz31FeU8afy
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I don't want to eat meat from animals who haven't been stunned properly and being a christian I'm not overly keen on the prayer being said if it is halal.

I don't like being deceived and want halal and kosher meat being labelled so I may buy meat from animals who are stunned.

crescentmoon what point of mine is moot serendipity. you said you dont want to eat halal meat and that is your right but what is the reason why? is it that the hand holding the knife may be brown?

Are you implying that all Muslims have brown hands and that people might distinguish on the basis of the colour of the skin on their hands? Seriously? That has to be one of the most racially offensive comments I have ever read.

• "It is high time the white, liberal, Guardian-reading classes stopped behaving like apologists and woke up. There is a fundamentalist Trojan horse in our midst, and we must take corrective action"

An oxymoron for such a man :* I am a dedicated Muslim, a devout religionist, an imam and intellectual scholar of Islam, but I eat whatever food is placed before me, with the obvious exception of pork to make such a comment about the Guardian readers....

So whats the method of stunning generally used in halal slaughter? And what regulations control how long the animal is "under slaughter conditions" until it is stunned? Is it hung first and for how long?

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-imam-who-took-on-the-muslim-mccarthyists-1666126.html

What a wonderful man!

crescentmoon try again, my hand is brown to Iam an African, Black skinned woman, so what is your point?

People can not have discussions like this without being called racist, Islamaphobic or any other offensive term. I do not agree that is all.

I'm sure kosher meat tended to be bought from a kosher butcher but why does halal seem to becoming mainstream when there aren't that many Moslems in the UK?

It seems the good doctor was an anti-apartheid campaigner, too - I like the sound of this guy more and more

Interesting, too, to see he's won substantial damages from the Muslim Weekly for printing lies about him. The same technique once again, I notice: attempt to smear anyone who dares to express a view you don't agree with

Thank god (take your pick) I seem to be in the majority for once!

I don't care if the animal was dedicated to Baal or Vlad The Impaler, since I harbour no superstition. I don't care how much it bled. I do care about it being unconscious when its throat was cut. Going to slaughter is already a terrifying experience for all but the most mollycoddled of beasts (and I used to buy their meat, back when I could afford it.) It's unnecessary, in my view, to add to their suffering by making them watch the preceding animal being killed, then having the same done to them while conscious.

I'd like the option to choose stunned meat, thank you.

It seems the good doctor was an anti-apartheid campaigner, too - I like the sound of this guy more and more

Me too.

Alemci- as I said before half of all kosher slaughtered meat is in main food chain.

Muslims mainly buy meat from halal butchers. Supermarkets aiming for Muslim customers have a separate halal section which is labeled halal, and comes from 'Muslim' brands (because people wouldn't trust a supermarket brand as being properly halal, unjustified perhaps but after the horsemeat scandal perhaps not). This will be sold at a premium.

The unlabelled halal meat is not for the benefit of Muslims. The supermarkets are price driven. They find cheap meat they sell it, not careing if it halal or not.

Bloody hell, melonade, really?

The method of slaughter general used for most halal meat is no different to that used for non halal meat gets other than someone, or a tape, says a prayer over it.

A smaller part of a different muslim sect (shi'ite rather than sunni, if I remember correctly) have a precept that the animal must be conscious to hear that prayer, so the animal is not stunned. Those facts and the figures to match have been typed over and over again on this thread. Links have been included to the RSPCA and others.... that question has been answered multiple times.

The time that an animal is in the abattoir is short these days, they like to get animals through quickly - economics as well as animal welfare. The time an animal is left hanging is 'the minimum necessary' or are you trying to suggest that muslim abattoirs, for some strange reason, like to torture the food before killing it?

The practices you are trying to bring into this used to happen in abattoirs all over the UK, as your father could probably attest to (No, I am not saying he did, but probably know of others who did). If you have any evidence that any abattoir does differently then you should contact the FSA immediately!

Alemci - the hindquarters of sheep/cows are so hard to prepare as kosher that they are generally sold into the mainstream meat market. So half(ish) of each Kosher slaughtered animal is sold to people who don't know that it has been slaughtered without stunning.

Oh and apparently some Muslims buy any meat and make it halal themselves. A practice I had never heard of until the linked daily mail article.

Really, littleducks? I didn't know that either. That raises some interesting possibilities!

Then again, if your local Imam says no....

That isn't a possibility for me, the fatwa I follow is clear. Stunning is permissible but traditional halal slaughter (the words and draining) must be followed.

I'm happy for labeling of meat to go ahead.

But I do think long term we would ask be better off eating meat that were knew alot more about, in terms of treatment in life not just in the final minutes of its life.

I wasn't going to say fatwa, I used precepts as a poor substitute

I agree with your last sentence. It is more about the whole of life of any animal and our knowledge. All else is smoke and mirrors.

littleducks I am unaware of this in regard to Kosher, where did you get this info from.

if this is the case how are the public not more aware of it.

The most amusing thing is that not only are the same stories from 3 years ago being trotted out it is the same pictures too:

www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/sep/20/halal-meat-the-truth
(recognise the window?)

And how they can claim the subway story was news when it was in this article (in last hohaa 3 years ago) I don't know:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315278/Top-supermarkets-secretly-sell-halal-Sainsburys-Tesco-Waitrose-M-S-dont-tell-meat-ritually-slaughtered.html

alemci- i initially became aware of it after it was explained on bbc Countryfile in March. Unfortunately this episode didn't seem to be available online anymore. But it is verifible.

alemci, it is in many of the links upthread, was on Countryfile a couple of weeks ago.

It is true. But the media has never really had the balls to go after the Jewish community. Muslims are a far easier target.

thanks for links. perhaps I should go vegetarian.

I still think the meat needs clearer labelling .

March!!?? That long ago?

Moving house lost me a month of my life!