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.

I don't think it is to do with not going after the Jewish community. alot of them don't keep Kosher anyway.

I just th

Gah!!

I just think that all meat should be properly labelled so the consumer can make an informed choice. Simples

Sorry, alemci, that doesn't make sense.

Kosher practice has been in the UK for hundreds of years. It has not changed. UK slaughter procedure has changes, kosher slaughter has always had an exemption.

Why has that never been discussed? Why is it that now we are discussing non stun slaughter as a muslim thing when actually the vast majority of halal meat is stunned?

A lot of muslims don't eat halal either. They also smoke, drink alcohol and a lot of other things a variety of fatwas would suggest they shouldn't.

Jews, muslims, christians (and any other faith you care to name) - some born into a faith keep to the precepts, some don't. So...?

Oh and halal meat at pizza express isn my news with her it was in the papers last year too:

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/sep/27/halal-food-festival-london

Kosher practice has been in the UK for hundreds of years. It has ... always had an exemption. Why has that never been discussed?

Good question. I don't quite know why 'all the supermarkets' have decided to sell mainly halal meat. Muslims seem to be saying they didn't put them under any pressure, but surely big businesses usually make changes due to either cost-cutting or customer pressure.

As far as I'm concerned, it's all a bit by the bye, but I would like information on how my meat was killed, just as I prefer to know something about how it was reared. For me, it's just a moral choice based on how much I can afford to care in any given shopping week - for customers belonging to a religion, though, it's more than that.

The imam in the link someone posted about sounds very cool.

It's very sad about the Amaadiya Muslims being persecuted as heretics and stigmatised by other Muslims. There are a large population of Amaadiyah Muslims in my city who are wonderful people who do a lot for everybody in the community irrespective of religion.

For me, it's just a moral choice based on how much I can afford to care in any given shopping week - for customers belonging to a religion, though, it's more than that

You see for me it's entirely a moral choice. I'm lucky enough not to have my choice restricted by what I can afford so why is my moral choice ( I don't want to eat intensively reared , non-stunned meat) less important than a customer making a choice based on religion?

I think it is misleading to suggest that Kosher practice has "always had an exemption" as the use of stunning can't be more than 100 years or so old.

Garlic has suggested that religion trumps moral choices. I don't see why that should be the case.

I suppose that's true Sue, also they did originally eat the whole animal. But it became easier to sell the hind quarter as non kosher than to remove the nerves and things required for it to be kosher. Now apparently nobody in the UK knows how to do it so can't.

So the meat wouldn't have been in the non kosher food chain if it could have been made kosher in the past. I wonder if then less animals would have been slaughtered as kosher of they got double the amount of meat from each carcass? So by selling half off they need to slaughter twice as many sheep for example?

That's probably massively oversimplified though.

Nom what doesn't make sense? All I want is to not buy meat that is either prepared in a Kosher or Halal sense. I had no idea if Kosher meat was being sold in supermarkets and it is not discussed in the media.

The media give the impression that some of Halal meat is being used for school meals, in hospitals, restaurants etc without the consumer being aware. Not good

alemci- I think alot of the time they get lumped together as the same thing.

What is the part you have the issue with, the stunning or the fact that it is prepared according to a religious tradition or both?

WRT the stunning, the vast majority of meat that is halal is stunned. The meat that isn't stunned is sold in specially marketed 'unstunned halal' (£££) butchers. The halal meat used commericially by big businesses that has made the headlines is stunned.

So it is (unstunned) kosher slaughtered meat that you need to be wary of, and because the meat hasn't been butchered to be kosher, it cant be labelled 'kosher.' So if you deliberately avoid halal meat you are more unlikely to eat unstunned meat .

I cant see much of a way around avoiding the 'waste' kosher slaughtered meat, apart from eating traceable meat from a butcher who wants their meat stunned. Or is suppose only eating the forequarters!

If it is the 'praying' bit it becomes more tricky, because anyone can pray over anything at any time tbf. If you want secular meat, you again need to look for a traceable meat source, but be aware that big companies have lied been mistaken about these things in the past (ie. horsemeat). Or I suppose you could eat alot of pork.

I think that it would be very difficult to ensure that meat hasn't been prayed over. You might be able to guarantee that it wasn't prayed over during slaughter, but what is to stop someone from nipping into Tesco for a quick prayer in the fresh meat aisle? I know that is flippant, but I think that trying to control who prays when in the food chain is heading a bit towards thought police.

littleducks it is the unstunned meat I object to. If what you say is correct and unstunned meat would only go to specialist butchers then there is no possibility of my shopping there.

So far as the prayers as I'm an atheist it shouldn't matter at all. Illogically it would matter if the prayers were being said by a live human in the slaughterhouse but if it is merely a CD then for me it's no different than if the radio or any random music CD were playing.

I didn't by any means intend to suggest 'religion' trumps morality! I thought twice about how to phrase that, but it was late.

I think there is an additional concern for religious followers. I don't care what, if anything, was chanted over the doomed animal but some care a lot about that.

It boils down to informed consumer choice - and why that choice appears to have been altered without informing us.

The media give the impression that some of Halal meat is being used for school meals, in hospitals, restaurants etc without the consumer being aware. Not good

It's good to see someone else mention schools and hospitals, which is a point I raised on another thread. Obviously with high street restaurants folk can always go somewhere else (though of course that could be applied to "religious eaters" too) but for schoolchildren there's little choice and for hospital patients hardly any at all if they want to eat certain meats

I suppose parents and visitors could provide sandwiches or something, but that's hardly the decent hot meal which many prefer. Frankly I hardly care about the reason for someone's choice; the fact remains that everyone should be free to make them - and that's being compromised

I'm not sure how this belief that supermarkets etc sell mainly halal meat non labelled came from? It's just not the case.

The majority is non halal still and the bits that do creep in are stunned. There would be no reason to go all halal as unless it is marked as such Muslims won't buy it anyway.

I do know that NZ lamb is (stunned) halal but that is stocked in supermarkets and bought by the cost sector (schools etc) because they want cheap meat not because muslims demand it. Yet they get blamed by the daily mail et al!

tbh I don't like the prayer thing. I know you can't police it but for that reason not keen. if a christian had said a prayer over the animal during slaughter would other religions be ok about it?

also I have issue with non stunning so a bit of both.

just want information about what the history of the meat is to make an informed choice.

I do know that NZ lamb is (stunned) halal but that is stocked in supermarkets and bought by the cost sector (schools etc) because they want cheap meat not because muslims demand it. Yet they get blamed by the daily mail et al!

Several issues there, Softly - I obviously can't speak for all LEAs, but certainly ours made it quite clear that menus had been changed to halal to suit the muslim community; I hardly think they'd have claimed this (knowing the row which would follow and did!!) if it hadn't been so? Nor can we blame the budgets this time, since they're constantly bleating about "the wicked cuts" and telling us what they've done to save money; there'd surely have been no reason to not mention this issue this time too?

I also realise that some caterers buy from supermarkets, but the rest of us ordinary folk are partial to lamb too ... so what choice in the matter are we left with??

And what about the hospital patients I mentioned ... what about their choice??

This looks useful to those who are really bothered (unlike carnivorous old me ):-

It is estimated that in total, under any method, 3% of cattle, 10% of sheep and goats and 4% of poultry slaughtered in Britain are not pre-stunned, although a proportion are stunned after the cut.

Vets say unstunned cattle take about 20 seconds (but up to 2 minutes) to lose consciousness, sheep six or seven seconds (but up to 20) and poultry seven or eight seconds, but all these times can be far longer.

Some European countries, most recently Denmark, have banned slaughter without pre-stunning. The RSPCA and British Veterinary Association are among the groups calling for an end to slaughter without pre-stunning – a move that would mean an end to religious exemptions from European and UK legislation on this element of slaughtering, and also, say campaigners, an end to unnecessary suffering.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/may/08/what-does-halal-method-animal-slaughter-involve

I'd be happier if we did as Denmark.

So your LEA has said "All halal no choice"? Then I do think thats a bit off, its not something I have known in our area, in which instance I would push them to confirm that it is pre-stunned. The actual prayer I don't really care about as it makes no difference. I also think that "The Muslim Community" gets blamed for a lot of decisions they have had no hand in.

Mainly because there is no more a homogenous group of muslims than there are of athiests / Christians etc. So for example my friend and her husband may have asked the school if they could do halal for their child. My MIL and FIL made the choice to have DH and his siblings come home for lunch so they had halal but didn't impose on anyone else and DH won't make any demands on the school at all as we don't keep halal, the kids just don't eat pork I do yum yum yum. His sister will probably do packed lunches but my BIL would be strict enough to check with the school or remove them for lunch.

I know thats just one example but such variation is prevalent so by "The Muslim Community" the school actually mean either:

• A few vocal parents overshadowing the rest

or

• they know they have some that want Halal and CBA to do two separate menus

If there were some equally vocal non-halal eating parent insisting on menu choice then they may reconsider, I would support that but based on fact and a reason why Halal is an issue i.e stun or the prayer or what?

Ditto Hospitals

Moving on the the choice the average Joe has in the supermarkets well its the supermarkets making a cost choice to have NZ lamb and the consumer thats buying it. There is no muslim pressure group making them stock halal thats just a myth. If they want to keep halal (like PIL) they buy from halal butchers, they trust the supermarkets as much as you do! The difference being they vote with their money and go elsewhere.

So do your research, move away from cheap supermarket meat which could be from absolutely anywhere and slaughtered in a myriad of ways then either shop at a local butchers OR buy meat that is stamped with the Quality Standard Mark which is all assured that its stunned as anything else doesn't hit the quality marks that they set.

Totally agree with you about the muslim community sometimes being blamed for things they had no part in, Softly - though of course it's equally important for them to accept responsibility where it's appropriate, just like everyone else

The "halal only in schools" decision was taken in cabinet by our LEA; I obviously don't know about individuals who may have pressured them, but they were quite frank about doing it for "sensitivity" reasons. It's perhaps worth saying that many local muslims also protested against this, feeling like most others that it was pointless political grandstanding without proper thought - something our council excel at, unfortunately :-( Needless to say it all made no difference, the choices of non-halal eaters were ignored and the whole thing's left a very nasty taste

Whether the supermarkets are responding to pressure or acting on purely financial motives is something I'm keeping an open mind on for now, but for myself I'm careful about accreditation and would encourage others who care about the issue to be the same

That's really shocking puzzled We really do have to be more vocal and make our wishes heard. It is possible to keep everyone satisfied, just takes a little more effort.

I don't buy meat in supermarkets any more. It took me about 5 seconds of watching a video of intensively farmed chickens being processed before I had to stop.

That's really shocking puzzled

Not if you knew our blasted council it's not!!!!!

Since this happened ages ago round here, I just went on their website to see what they're currently saying about it - I even put "halal" in their search box since nothing came up. The result was absolutely zero so it seems that having issued their diktat and taken a load of flak, they'd really rather not hear any more about it, which is infuriating but sadly not surprising

As you suggest, with a little more effort everyone could be happy; it's just a shame our LEA don't share this view ...

See that properly pisses me off. Ridiculous decisions like that alongside things such as banning Christian jewellery at work and other such bollocks make me incandescent with rage.

It's never The decision makers that get the backlash, its my DH and my kids and all the other poor sods wjo happen to be muslim (or brown seems to be enough). When in reality they would never advocate for that.

In fact I believe the very first passage of the Koran speaks about respecting others beliefs. I wear my cross necklace to my devout MILs house and she has yet to spontaneously combust