Common questions about Halal meat

March 20, 2018

Everyone, including the media, like to talk about Halal food. There are a lot of myths that abound surrounding halal meat, and in recent years there has been some debate about British citizens, supposedly unknowingly, purchasing halal meat at restaurants and supermarkets.

To get to the bottom of people’s worries we have compiled some of the most popular questions that we hear about halal food:

  1. What are people angry about?

Some people are upset because they believe that some high-street stores are serving halal meat without things being correctly labelled. People have ethical concerns with halal meat, suggesting animals are killed in a more inhumane way than other slaughtering methods.

  1. What do Muslims think about it?

Most Muslims were initially confused by the backlash. Subway and Pizza Express have been pretty clear about the fact they use halal meat in some of their restaurants. Once mainstream newspapers started publishing stories about people’s outrage, some Muslims felt they were being attacked for something that was out of their hands.

Most Muslims were content with using halal butchers rather than petitioning for local supermarkets like Tesco to supply Halal meat. The supply of Halal meat by these stores seemed to stem from the positive reaction from the Muslim community towards halal food being introduced in companies such as KFC.

  1. What’s the difference between Halal and non-Halal?

For meat to be Halal, God’s name should be pronounced over the meat before being slaughtered with one swift cut to it’s throat and the blood is completely drained from its body.

Non-halal meats can be slaughtered in a number of different ways; poultry is stunned and guillotined, for example.

  1. Is the issue around stunning the animal?

Animals that are stunned before being killed don’t feel any pain when they are killed, which seems to be the main reason that people have an issue with Halal slaughter. There are debates amongst Islamic scholars about whether it is acceptable or not to stun animals for Halal slaughter. It doesn’t appear in Islamic guidelines, but a lot of Halal slaughter houses do stun animals before they are slaughtered.

To experience the best Halal food visit Royal Nawaab’s Halal restaurant in London.