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!!)

Thank you Cookiemumster. I would so hate to be a non-stupid idiot .

It seems that anyone on MN who confesses to feeling uncomfortable about certain Islamic practices is slated.

Ah, Cookiemumster, I see that your inflammatory and derogatory post is your only post ever on MN. Well done for being brave.

Lets be clear - I didnt claim to see pigs with broken legs on the way to the halal slaughter house. The reference to the transportation issues was about the slaughter processes in general. There are a lot of animal welfare issues surrounding the production of meat, besides the actual killing method. Havent you seen the lorries carrying poultry sat on the side of the motorway waiting their allocated slot for slaughter, sitting in direct sun for ages. Would you survive that if you were in the middle of the lorry with thousands of birds crammed in around you, even with the allocated ventilation requirements between crates. And yes, I have seen pigs slip on their way out of the lorry and break their legs and be left for a while waiting for slaughter. Not nice. And as for the state of some of the sheep that have travelled hundreds of miles to their allocated slaughter house - their insides tell the tale of their hard life (a lot of the meat is written off due to disease).

If you have seen that Frog then please note the reg number/abattoir and company and report them. There are regulations and laws for the health and welfare of animals in transportation and what you describe breaks them. Animals are inspected prior to slaughter to check for fitness/disease by veterinary surgeons, and transporters would be in trouble if legs were broken etc.

As far as my thoughts on halal/non-halal, I have not seen Halal slaughter, but whilst the theory sounds ok, the evidence I was shown during training made me have reservations. My experience however of non-halal abattoirs has shown me that there is a wide range of 'quality' and 'care' taken. The numbers processed are so huge that mistakes happen. The small scale, local abattoir producing local meat has been doomed by EU legislation favouring huge central abattoirs, where transportation welfare is compromised, and mistakes happen.

OP, you have been put an awkward situation by agreeing to feed your tenant, but as you signed up to the agreement, I would suggest you cook halal periodically, but research your sourcing as well as you can.

Latestincarnation - done and rejected. It is a regular occurence around here - two large poultry slaughter houses nearby. Many people have complained to RSPCA etc about it but it still goes on. And yes, there are veterinary surgeons in the slaughterhouses ........ (Ill say no more) ....... doesnt alter what I, and several of my colleagues have seen though. As one vet told me, a pig is valuable to both the farmer and the slaughter house. Its difficult to kill it as damaged. To be perfectly honest, even I who am a total animal lover and was raised resueing and helping animals with my father, got hardened whilst working in the slaughterhouses. I accepted things I never thought I would and can even to my complete shame, remember not being too distressed when a live cow escaped the stunning enclosure after not being properly stunned and ran through the line amonst the carcasses being processed. Now I would be sick, but then I just got on with it. Animal welfare is not what I expected when the creatures only have a few hours left anyway. And dont get me started on poultry.

Without going into the comparison between different methods of slaughter, it would seem worth getting Halal meat for this student, if you can accommodate trips to the other town and have room in the freezer.

As you have previously provided accommodation for other students, and no doubt will do so in future, then if the need to go to the other town becomes a nuisance for you, then it might be worth a note to the college that you don't provide Halal cuisine, for future reference, so other students, so any who have this requirement will seek alternative accommodation.

(What do other families who put up college students do, if they're in the same town as you?)

Apologies for highjack. Off to bed.

I'm sure you would, but this thread is from three years ago.

I have worked on the line in several abbatoirs ( about twenty years ago ) and, on occasion, would slaughter animals myself. (electrocution and captive bolt) I have also visited poultry slaughter houses.

I don't think that the halal method of killing animals is any worse than the non halal methods as it is very quick and very final.

I was always surprised how humane the abbatoirs were. It was in everyones interest to kill the animals quickly and effectively. If the animals are overly stressed it can effect the meat.

Moving live animals miles and miles around the country or even overseas to be killed is cruel and it is a shame that abbatoirs are now so centralised. It was probably more humane for animals to be killed on the farm or round the back of the local butchers as they were years ago. ( Although,this was not so good for food safety/hygiene)

I do believe that halal meat should be marked as being halal.

Also don't really understand where kosher comes into it
I worked in a halal butcher's for a while and one of the guys there told me that kosher was the next best thing for them if halal was not available, as the animals were killed with similar care and rules.

OP

Fish? As I understand it, and I am, as always, happy to be corrected, fish with gills are halal. Something to do with the gills being a symbolic cut.

Also some take aways do Halal options. Ask at your local indian take away, if the people running it are Muslim then their curry probably is.

Sorry I mean the curry is probably halal.

Zombie thread alert

Tesco sell halal meats - chicken breasts are half price at the moment! I eat both halal and non halal meat. I think halal is a humane way to slaughter and frankly daft to get picky about the manner of an animals death when how they are kept in their lifetime is the really important thing.

That's it. I am a vegetarian from now on.

That was an interesting read.

I imagine the lodger has moved on now though!

I eat mainly Halal meat, I support my local high st butcher, who happens to be a Halal butcher.

I think it is disrectful of his beliefs to not serve him halal meat.

Nonsense. If the OP is against halal meat then it is disrespectful of her beliefs to expect her to serve it.

The two main differences between halal meat and non-halal meat seems to be with non-halal meet the animal is unconscious before it's neck is cut. Even if rendering it unconscious does not work 100% of the time then it would be the same as halal slaughter methods. As some of the posters have said that the animals still feel pain when unconscious then all that we know about surgery seems to be wrong!!!

I eat meat and would never eat halal meat, please have a look at the videos on the web to see how horrendous halal slaughter is.

A good point is that halal meat production would be highly unlikely to be allowed in this country if it was not done in the name of religion.

Does anyone know how the animals are reared? Do you get free range halal?

I would rather a happier life and a painful death than a crap life and a slightly less painful death?

Don't care if it's halal or not and have eaten a lot of halal meat. From what I've read I'm not sure which method is more cruel.

It's a pity you weren't more aware of his dietary needs before he came to stay. He might be better in student accommodation where it is more flexible.

Ilove

Pre-stunning is allowed for Halal and according the RSPCA in 2009 90% of halal slaughter in the UK involved pre-stunning.

www.rspca.org.uk/servlet/Satellite?blobcol=urlblob&blobheader=application/pdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=RSPCABlob&blobwhere=1109267162636&ssbinary=true

I know a question was raised about pre-stunning particularly of chicken because there was a concern that the pre-stunning killed the chicken not the knife cut. Further research was done that showed that this was not the case.

I have seen films where the animals are not stunned properly and they need to do it again and again halal meat is no more cruel than any other slaughtered meat. If you have a paying lodger then get him some halal meat now and again when you are in the town that sells it then veggie stuff the rest of the time , did you not research what he would eat before you took him on ,

OP, New Zealand lamb is halal, would he eat that?