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 dont think it has become anti islamic tbh, perhaps a little anti halal but i think there is a valid difference of opinion

I do agree that there do seem to be alot of fatwas being issued about kosher being ok/ there is a special practice that negates it needing to be halal by people who arent in the position to issue them though

if you are eating meat halal or otherwise, an animal would have died in order to get it onto your plate - end of. the ethics of it are really not that complicated and people should really stop trying to take the moral high- ground by splitting hairs over whether their preferred method is kinder to animals.
the op has later stated that she does not object to providing it after all. the problem is more a logistical one. cant you just take him out for a (halal) kebab or have a halal takeaway curry once a week ??

okaaay, are you reading the same thread here?

Mumblechum clearly insults the religion as a whole. She 'abhors' the tenents apparently.

good point zebramummy.

As I said a lot of the 'halal meat is cruel' brigade are just islamophobes.

Roneef, mumblechum expresses her personal opinion which is that she does not like the religon or various tenants. THat is not the same as the thread being anti-islam.

I agree pretty anti halal but that is quite a common view, mostly bred from ignorance not only about halal but also about how our own meat is dealt with.

Not understanding meat prodution does not make someone anti anything really!

will the real nick g please stand up!!!

sorry only joking
it is also worth mentioning that just because someone eats a different kind of meat they are not three meaty-meals-a-day carnivores - most of my muslim friends don't particularly like meat/talking about it/making a big deal of it - infact i would say that they have a take-it-or-leave-it approach to the matter and would be quite happy to follow the guideline one portion a week as far as i have seen

?

Just come back on quickly - I can't find any of my research notes, and by the time I do, this thread will be long gone

At the time it was all done - mid - late 90's, the research proved to the group of vets and students carrying it out that halal wasn't the inhumane practise that many now claim it is.

The un-halal abotoirs did often rush their jobs, so there was a percentage of animals that died in horrific pain - this was, and, I imagine still is, standard practise.
The halal ones we visited had a much different atmosphere, the animals weren't panicked, and the slaughtermen were much more respectful of the animals and what they were doing, but obviously this was over 10 years ago, so they may have changed.

The RSPCA is very against halal, but sadly the RSPCA's reputation lead me to believe that, like a lot of their "projects" this is simply a way to get the public on their side - I could go into more detail, but it would take far too long.

The information on the link I posted was old, but, like I said earlier, mirrored the evidence we found in our research.

I can't find the details I know I have, so I'll back down now

One poster does not make a thread.

Discussion about the cruelty or otherwise of all methods of slaughter has occured. People with vegetarian viewpoints as well as those advocating small producers/slaughterhouses as any production line likely to be less scrupulous.

People who think halal = cruel are probably listening to RSPCA line rather than anything more sinister i reckon.

Case for halal also not helped by person saying halal is not cruel making statements like animals can feel pain even when unconcious, which is clearly nonsense.

Then above describing people rushing their jobs and animals being in horrific pain as "standard practice". Standard practice means the way something is done normally, as a matter of course, the approved way. When clearly what has been described is not standard practice, although it may well happen. It may happen a lot, but the description is all wrong. Simply say that this sort of thing is common. I doubt a scientist would mis-spell the word "practice" either, and I'm not usually a pedant.

This sort of thing does nothing to change the views of people who have had their ideas informed by eg RSPCA.

God, if you eat any sort of 'mass-production' meat, especially pork or chicken, as frogetty/ riven etc have said, it's a bit to start fretting about the last few minutes of the animal's life while conveniently forgetting about the previous few months of it's short sorry existance.

nice one little ducks, your more articulate then me, i just got annoyed and the random things people were saying and claiming it can be made halaal, when this isnt the case. esp as he is from saudi, he will not do this, its just to serve him veggie if halaal is difficult to come by, with some fish. asda/tesco have halaal ready made burgers etc, maybe you can give him that occasionally.

well done op for taking the effort and time to find out.

I thought that Halal, meant had to be cut by an adult male Muslim; Kosher had to be throat-cut by a certified Rabbi (so obviously Jewish, not Muslim). And I'm not sure whether there are specific prayers to be uttered in the process; fairly ritualistic, with either. The two sound quite mutually exclusive to me, anyway.

Thanks for the explanations, Seaglass; Quality of life while alive rather than method of slaughter matters most of all to me, anyway; is there such a thing as FreeRange Halal?

yes there is some free range halal about, i think someone posted a link on a previous page, also ive heard of some coming from small farms for eg in wales

Thesecondcocking
"I don't think that anyone who wants to eat an animal eventually should have the right to start getting sniffy about how it lives or dies to be honest."

Wow - I couldn't disagree more.

I really think that ALL of us who choose to eat an animal have to take responsibility for ensuring that we are doing so in the knowledge that the best welfare standards have been kept to. The more of us who think about the origins of our food, the more improvements we will see in the standards of welfare.

The 'cheap chicken' culture to me is disgusting, and it's only because people buy it without thinking of 'how it lives or dies' that this continues. I have been to the Sun Valley chicken processing plant in Herefordshire (school trip, bizarrely enough!) and was utterly horrified.

Sorry to divert from the main topic but this really stood out as an odd comment.

Thanks for all the posts. I think I am going to provide halal meat once a week or so, on balance it doesn't seem to be any worse a method of slaughtering than the 'usual uk way'.

Bit baffled about the pig breaking its leg on the way to a halal slaughterhouse. We have had other Muslim students live with us before that were lax about halal but no way in the world would we ever have offered them pork! Also don't really understand where kosher comes into it. Totally different religion. Is that to be served with CofE communion wine or something?

Well i think that is a more than fair and generous, I would also suggest that you keep an eye out for products that you wouldnt expect to contain meat (like cakes/sweets/pop tarts ) containing things like gelatine or lard

Must admit the kosher thing did get me thinking of 'The Apprentice' episode with the kosher/halal mix up

Oh and for clarification of the above (before we get another islam treats women as second class citizens thread)

A person, a man or a woman, who slaughters an animal must be a Muslim. An animal can also be slaughtered by a Muslim child who is mature enough to distinguish between good and bad

Mustahab acts while slaughtering animals

1)While slaughtering the sheep (or a goat), both of its hands and one foot should be tied together and the other foot should be left free. As for a cow, its two hands and two feet should be tied and the tail should be left free.
And in the case of a camel, if it is sitting, its two hands should be tied with each other from below up to its knees, or below its armpits, and its feet should be left free. And it is recommended that a bird should be left free after being slaughtered so that it may flap its wings and feathers.

2)Water should be placed before an animal before slaughtering it.

3)An animal should be slaughtered in such a way that it should suffer the least, that is, it should be swiftly slaughtered with a very sharp knife.

(Tken from Code of Practice, Book of Islamic Laws)

Whilst I totally respect the viewpoint that halal meat is cruel based on the islamic ruling/actual practices carried out by muslims it does get a bit triesome when if it is based on things that are untrue and would be totally disregarded by the vast majority of muslims (like the Qu'ranic verse recitation mentioned above)

Kosher comes into it because many of the practices are similar to Halal, and because my Muslim, Halal-eating friends will happily eat Kosher meat.

(Littleducks - that Apprentice bit was so utterly cringeworthy! What an idiot.)

Fimble, there was a recent New Scientist article showing that it's been proven once and for all that Halal/ Kosher methods of killing livestock do cause pain. They said, therefore, that it is a cruel method of killing animals - a most interesting argument in a magazine that regularly reports on animal testing used in science experiments .

Fish, fimble, give him some fish. Job done

(Unless you are one of the rare people who worry about how fish are killed - I don't think that many people seem to worry the same as they do with mammals - hence my recommendation )

Serve him fish and vege meals on an everyday basis and halal takeaways occasionally. That should be fine.

Mumblechum you are an idiot.
And a stupid one at that too.

Tbh i hadn't really thought about halal meat until this post, i think both uk and halal have their pros and cons. I certainly wouldn't refuse meat killed in an halal method. Providing the person who is doing the slaughter does it as quickly as it is stated, then i find it does show the animal more respect then the uk way. Also to the person who claimed to have seen pigs with broken legs on their way to the halal slaughter house indeed. I have just been having a little nose around on google, and that is impossible is it not? As it would be in total breech of everything that the religion stands for. Also the chickens that die in transit are forbidden to be used as it would not be halal if it died in that manner so i honestly don't understand the statement that was made seen as you have worked in the trade so should be fully aware of the restrictions.