To buy Halal meat, or not buy Halal meat?

[FimbleHobbs]

I need opinions and facts please - we have a student staying with us as a long term (paying) house guest.

Hes 19, first time away from home (Saudi Arabia) and speaks very little english.

We discovered when he arrives that he only eats halal food. Our town does not have a halal butcher so at the weekend we did a 40 mile round trip to buy a halal chicken. Other than that we have given him vegetarian food, which he has eaten happily although not with the gusto that he ate the chicken with!

I don't really mind the hassle of serving halal meat once or twice a week (have room in freezer to stock up so wouldn't mean lots of driving to other town).

BUT - I am not sure about the ethical side of halal meat - I have read a little bit (wiki/google) and there is a lot of opposition to the method, saying it is really cruel. I have never seen a chicken slaughtered either way so don't really know. I just wondered if anyone had any opinions or useful information to help me make my mind up?

NB I should maybe add that DH is all for whatever makes our guest happy and sod the principles(mainly because he wants to spend the rent money on a new gadget!!)

I personally won't buy halal meat because of the way in which it is killed, but then I'll also only buy free range meat/eggs.
There are lots of halal butchers in my part of sarf london and lots of them have banners up in their windows saying 'Guaranteed 100% non-stunned halal meat'

It makes my skin crawl every time I read it. Boasting about selling meat in which the animal suffered as much as possible during the slaughter process is just sick.

Did he ask before he ate the chicken if it is halal? If not, can you assume that he isn't really that fussed about it? (The flip side being that being from Saudi, he just assumes all meat is halal..)

It depends on what your rental agreement is with your guest, if it is to provide food then i think you should at least occasionally serve halal meat to him, as it is not him being fussy. but i think he will also understand that he is in a different country, and the meat is different most of the time he will just have to have veggie food.

if there is no agree ment about the food and you are just doing it to be nice then sod him. he should sort his own food if he is not happy with what you are cooking

Some halal products are available in supermarkets also.

there are problems with both methods - research has suggested that the western method may also cause pain to the animal. Plus there are the times that the stun doesn't work.

Proper halal slaughter aims to minimise suffering - the knife is supposed to be razor sharp so the animal passes out and dies very quickly. The animal is supposed to be taken out of sight of other animals. Of course, it depends on the person doing the slaughter to follow the rules.

I buy halal meat sometimes. Not for religious purposes, but the halal butcher at the grocers I use has great quality, tasty meat.

Kosher meat is sometimes acceptable if you can locate that without a 40 mile drive, might be worth asking?

Thanks - yes he has been very specific about halal meat (he got a friend to interpret for him to explain it) - we've had students before from UAE who haven't been fussed about halal but this lad is very different.

I really don't want to offend his beliefs but I am just not sure of the idea that the animal doesn't suffer this way.

The rental agreement is just to provide food. The college coordinator said we don't have to provide meat at all.

OK, this is sort of area of expertise for me, having done a lot of reasearch into the halal method of slaughter.
I apologise if this is very boring

In this country, the approved method of slaughter is to stun the animal with a captive bolt (big electric shock) before slitting its throat, so in the eyes of the public, the animal has no awareness of what is being done.

The halal method (allowed on the grounds of religion) is to use a very sharp knife to slit the animals throat without it being stunned first.

Now, understandably, this sounds barbaric, so many meat eaters are opposed to this method.

However, having done research into this, actually, the halal method is better for the animal.

Animals were killed in both methods with sensors placed on pain receptors in the brain, and surprisingly enough, the halal method registered no pain to the animal, as the knife was so sharp, it went straight through the spinal column almost immediately.
With the conventional UK approved method, although the animal was unconcious, the pain registered for minutes.

Chicken slaughtering methods in this country are particularly horrific - the chickens are hung upside down, are dipped into a water bath which electricutes them (in theory) then their throats are slit - but, there is evidence to show that a fairly high number (we're talking about 2%ish her, but considering the many thousands slaughtered every day, this is a huge number) pull their heads up so they miss the electricution, and bleed to death painfully.

Halal would avoid all of that.

So, ethically, for me anyway, halal is certainly not the barbariic practise that many people claim, but probably a much more peaceful way for an animal to be killed.

I'm aware that some people will be distressed reading this, but IMO, meat eaters should be aware of where their meat comes from.

There was uproar recently when it was found that many supermarkets were stocking halal killed meat without stating it on the labels, and the fact that it wasn't stunned before killing didn't sit easy with many UK shoppers. They prefer to think that the animals are unconsious thoughout, and therefore not knowing a thing, even though it's been found that they are in much more pain.

I do wonder why we have codes of practice regarding slaughter, that we have deemed humane and then halal is allowed.

chopstheduck - just read your post, and this bit "Of course, it depends on the person doing the slaughter to follow the rules." stood out for me

Any slaughtering, whether UK methods or otherwise, has a registered inspector present at any time, so the rules are upheld. Also, because the halal method is done for religious reasons, they do seem to be a lot stricter and regulate themselves with their methods than other UK slaughterhouses.

seaglass not at all boring - very interesting, thank you. The halal way does sound less like a factory conveyor belt type of approach.

Just a shame there couldn't be a 'halal with stunning' which would sound like the best of both methods.

I was vegetarian as a teenager, the more I think about all this the more I remember why.

Halal and Kosher meat are both acceptable to Muslims.

Although the perception in this country is that it is more humane to stun animals before slaughtering them, the evidence suggests that halal and kosher slaughtering is as humane, if not more so. With conventional slaughtering there is real risk that the animal does not get completely stunned, and is therefore not only aware of what is happening, but is quite possibly already in pain.

With kosher slaughtering (and I think with halal, too), the person doing the job is careful to hold the knife out of sight of the animal, and ensures that it is extremely sharp at all times. An important part of their training is to ensure that the animal suffers as little as possible. Think how you can sometimes cut yourself quite deeply, and not realise until you see the blood several seconds or longer later. That's how little the animal suffers - by the time they might realise what has happened, they are unconscious.

I'm no expert on all of this but isn't a "captive bolt" a mechanical device that fires out a bolt of metal and not an electric shock?

The captive part comes from the fact that the bolt is attached to the device and doesn't go flying off like a bullet would. Some captive bolts penetrate while others just deliver such an impact to the skull so as to, allegedly, knock the animal out.

The device that the assassin uses in No Country For Old Men is what I thought a "captive bolt" was.

So are animals in the UK slaughtered with a captive bolt or an electric shock?

I think if you eat meat then you have to accept that at some point the animal has to die. And dying is usually painful or distressing in some way.

I think we have become so far removed from our food that we imagine all sorts of grisly things if a slaughterer isn't doing it 'our' way, but in fact, does stunning not simply prolong the pain?#

I'm sure the Halal method was thought up to minimise the suffering wrought on the animal for the sake of its meat. Hence the insistence of the animal being not only alive, but unharmed in any way, plus fed and watered before slaughter.

Sorry, electric shock, I meant - as I wrote captive bolt, I made a mental note to delete it, then forgot

To the animals killed in the halal way, stunning is absolutely unecessary, and would just cause more upset to the animal.
It is used in the conventional methods, as otherwise the animal would die in horrific, noisy, disturbing pain, as the slaughtermen aren't nearly as skilled at their jobs as Halal trained slaughtermen.

Electric shock is "an" approved way of killing some animals, it is certainly not "the" approved way of killing all animals.

Seaglass exactly what did you research?

DH is muslim and I'm vegetarian, and yes, I did look into halal methods when we moved in together as I wanted to be a bit more ok with buying meat for him. It seems that proper halal butchers do kill animals in a more ethical way, and also tend to be local and smaller operations, reducing the 'factory production line' effect of traditional intensive farming and abbatoirs. I suggest you have a look at your online supermarkets, they all do halal meat but don't always deliver it to every area (depends on the demand for it in the area that stocks the online deliveries) but if you can find it, order a bit and stick it in the freezer. I assume if you eat meat any that isn't used can be eaten by your family?

Why is it so important that Halal slaughter is done humanely when in animal sacrifices the animal is wrestled to the ground by chanting mobs and jumped on??

www.islamawareness.net/Hajj/sacrafice.html Read the above and try not to confuse Islam with Arabian pagan rituals, Junglist.

DP is an ex slaughter man....he worked in a slaughter house for many years. I won't repeat some of the things I have heard, just say not all is as it seems in Halal or Kosha (sp) butchers.

I do however buy my meat from the local halal butchers because there are not any others local!

Ok have skimmed it. My ex is a Turkish Muslim and took my oldest son out while on holiday. On the street they were wrestling with a cow?! Then they bled it out. My son was heartbroken. I was fuming, the animal would have been terrified. It was a religious celebration can't remember exactly what.

If you really are unhappy with serving halal meat stick to the vegi option. If he needs a meat fix he can always heat out at a halal restaraunt.

I think it is disrectful of his beliefs to not serve him halal meat. Can you go to a muslim shop and buy canned halal meat? I am sure that when we lived in Oman, I bought halal corned beef, sausauges etc. Also, there is no religious thing around fish.

The research was to look into the halal method compared to the electric shock, then slit throat method, as this gave direct comparisons.
Of course there are others, including captive bolt, shooting, gasing etc.

I didn't personally carry out the eeg testing on the brains, but this was the chosen subject for my thesis, so I did learn a lot about both methods. I'll have to dig out all the paperwork!

Also, I said that they cut the spinal column - which of course they don't! Doh! I meant all the main veins, arteries, trachea and oesophagus.

This is a website that shows results of testing comparing halal method and captive bolt www.mustaqim.co.uk/halal.htm

There have been some more recent tests that have proved inconclusive, but as they weren't carried out by halal slaughtermen, there was some doubt about whether the knife was as sharp as it should have been, so the ethical argument is ongoing.

I kill my own table chickens by wringing their necks, but I have also first hand seen the "humane" methods that go on every day in chicken slaughterhouses. I have had several arguments with well-meaning, intelligent, animal lovers, who think that my method is cruel, but I know that my chickens do not suffer at all, their death is instantaneous, which cannot be said for the approved methods - that is why I've questioned the conventional methods, as, as far as I see it, they are more painless for the public to be able to (wrongly) believe that the animal isn't suffering.

Well,I don´t think it´s an option not tobuy it, is it?

and of course I didn't mean relgious things I actaully meant issues.

seaglass, in your first post where you say about some chickens who might pull up their heads and avoid the electrocution and bleed to death - would that not be the same as halal anyway?

I am a bit confused about this bit "With the conventional UK approved method, although the animal was unconcious, the pain registered for minutes."

Surely if the animal was unconscious, it doens't matter if the pain is registering in the brain, as the animal is unconscious and so can't feel it.

The reason for the method of slaughter in halal and kosher isn't to optimise the experinece for the animal, it is to ensure all the blood bleeds out IIRC, and the animal nneds to be alive when it happens with the heart pumping to make sure that happens. Something like that anyway

Also would like to point out that kosher and halal means a lot of meat being slaughtered, in areas with a lot of business/large companies there will be a production line efefct whichever was you do it. I suspect with all methods, small producers pay more care to the process.