News From : DagangHalal.com (19 May 2014)
CALL at Subway in Hounds Gate for a chicken salad roll and you’ll see on the front windows a yellow and green circular symbol – with the word Halal in Arabic and English.
No confusion there, either for Muslims who adhere to Islamic dietary laws or for other customers who happen to believe that the dhabihah tradition of ritual animal slaughter is inhumane.
The Subway gesture is voluntary. The question now is whether food retailers and restaurateurs should be legally obliged to declare Halal origins on packaging. The rumpus began last week when a national newspaper broke the news of the Halal meat “secret” at Pizza Express, reporting that the chain had exclusively used Halal chicken without mentioning it on menus.
Pizza Express responded by saying there was no “secret” – staff were free to share the fact with customers and the information was on its website.
At the heart of the issue are the rules relating to the slaughter of animals under the Islamic code.
Standard practice in mainstream British abattoirs is for doomed livestock to be pre-stunned to reduce stress and pain.
However dhabihah demands that animals be healthy at the moment they are killed – so in a strictly orthodox licensed Halal process, the animal would not be stunned before its throat is cut and the blood is drained from its body.
So what is the law on food labelling? How many non-Muslims are unwittingly consuming Halal meat? And do they care?
As things stand, there is no legal requirement for Halal meat to be labelled as such.
“It’s an issue that has been around for a while but there is no such requirement under the Food Labelling Regulations 1996,” said a spokesman for the trading standards department at Nottinghamshire County Council.
“We have got some new food legislation coming in but we are waiting for final guidance on it from the Food Standards Agency.”
Speculation continues on the possible content of the next Food Information to Consumers Regulations but if anyone is expecting an immediate governmental response to the headlines, Prime Minister David Cameron stated last week that labelling should be a matter not for legislation but for restaurateurs and retailers to resolve with their suppliers and customers.
It’s not an issue at major Asian food retailers like Pak Foods, in Sneinton Dale, or the little Halal butchers of NG7, where you get what it says on the sign over the door. The issue is at stores where you would not expect to find Halal meat… but get it, all the same.
All the major supermarkets have conceded that they sell halal meat that is not labelled as such. New Zealand lamb figures heavily, although both Sainsbury’s and Morrisons insist that all their lamb sourced from New Zealand has been pre-stunned.
That is the confusing factor in the debate: although orthodox Halal methods concern animal welfare campaigners, many animals killed under the Halal code are pre-stunned using electricity, in a way that some Muslims approve of.
Only a few days before the Pizza Express story broke, Subway announced Halal-only meat menus at 185 butty bars in the UK and Ireland. They include outlets in Hounds Gate and Alfreton Road, Nottingham.
“All our suppliers comply with EU animal welfare legislation as a minimum and we require suppliers of Halal products to adopt the stunning of animals prior to their slaughter,” a Subway spokesman said.
“All Halal meats are certified by the appropriate Halal authorities. All Halal Subway stores have numerous signs stating that they serve Halal food.
“These are situated on the menu panels, nutritional information and in the front window of the store.”
Selected KFC and Nando’s branches also serve Halal chicken. As with Subway, details are available on the firms’ websites.
As for public institutions, a spokesman for Nottingham City Council said: “We supply about 20 schools with Halal meat for specific, non-mainstream dishes, and they are labelled as such.
“However schools might serve, for example, a curry that is not necessarily Halal, so people who do not want to eat Halal meat can still enjoy the dish.”
At Nottinghamshire County Council, serving an area with a much smaller Muslim population, the authority’s catering suppliers On a Roll, Maloneys, Brakes, Pasta King and UK Foodhall do not supply Halal food to schools.
Nor does the health service bulk-buy Halal meat for the mainstream catering operation at Queen’s Medical Centre and City Hospital.
“However we do keep stocks of Halal meals for patients who ask for them,” a spokesman said.
And who cares? One national newspaper poll had 73% of Britons believing restaurants should be made to say when menu items contain Halal food.
The result was franked by a OnePoll survey concluding that 80 per cent of diners would prefer to know if they were eating Halal meat… although, if they did know, 50 per cent of the interviewees said they would be prepared to eat it.
Source: Nottinghampost.com