Over 350 companies from 22 countries will be participating at the annual Saudi food, hotel, hospitality & propac arabia show to be held in Jeddah from May 20-23, 2012, under the patronage of the Saudi Ministry of Agriculture and under the auspices of Engineer Hassan Sangoof, Director General, Ministry of Agriculture, Makkah Region.

Organised by Al-Harithy Company for Exhibitions (ACE), the event – Saudi Arabia’s 17th international Event for Food, Beverages and Catering, Hotel Equipment, Supplies and Services – is set for opening at 5 p.m. on Sunday, May 20 at the JCCI-owned Jeddah Centre for Forums & Events.

“This is the leading event in the Kingdom’s food, hotel, hospitality, processing and packaging industries, with a successful track record of more than fifteen years,” Zahoor Siddique, Vice President for Exhibitions, ACE, said.

The show has established Jeddah as the hub of the food, hotel and hospitality sector, and the Kingdom as a national showcase and forum where worldwide suppliers present their products and services, he added.

The event, propac arabia – the Kingdom’s comprehensive showcase for the industry – runs concurrently and will display a diverse range of exhibitor profile covering the entire spectrum of this industry. This is Saudi Arabia’s 17th International Event for Production & Processing, Printing & Packaging, Plastics & Chemicals.

The dual event hosts an impressive list of national pavilions from China, Egypt, Indonesia, Taiwan, Turkey, USA and individual companies from Belgium, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Korea, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Singapore, Tunisia and UAE; and Saudi companies representing international brands.

The show incorporates TopChef & Art de Table, jointly organized by ACE and Saudi Arabian Chef Association, which will feature culinary skills of chefs from the finest hotels and restaurants and adjudicated by a panel of international experts.

“Art de table will be yet another attraction of impressive table displays by leading hotels and restaurants,” Zahoor Siddique added.

The shows also enjoy the support of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Islamic Center for Development of Trade with Royal Host as the Main Sponsor and Fakieh Group as the strategic sponsor.

The show runs daily from 5 -10 pm, 20-23 May, 2012.

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Some member states supported the Swedish delegation mentioning a possible overuse of the possibility to slaughter animals without preliminary stunning in certain member states. The Commission recalled the existing EU framework and pointed out that its implementation rely on subsidiarity. Recommendations on ritual slaughtering have been published in 2011 and a study is ongoing to evaluate the opportunity for informing the consumer on this type of slaughtering.

According to directive 93/119, animals should be stunned before slaughter. However, in the case of animals subject to particular methods of slaughter requested by certain religious rites this requirement does not apply. Certain member states seem to use largely this possibility of slaughter without stunning although this is not foreseen by the legislator.

Considering that there is an increasing interest among consumers for animal welfare, Sweden therefore incitated other member states to take appropriate action to avoid misuse of religious exemptions to stunning. The Commission could initiate for example targeted controls performed by the Food and Veterinary Office (FVO), prepare an harmonised procedure for approval and control of operators performing unstunned slaughter. Furthermore, Sweden suggests that specific labelling may be a tool.

Related posts:

1. Australia: Ministers to discuss banning religious exemptions from stunning
2. Australia: RSPCA wants stunning exemptions killed
3. UK: Top Vets slams ‘unacceptable’ slaughter of animals without prior stunning
4. End ‘cruel’ religious slaughter, say scientists
5. UK: ANSA welcomes withdrawal of proposed Dutch religious slaughter ban

by Alliance for Natural Health

More and more countries are banning imports of American food products for safety reasons.

Last week, Indonesia became the first country to halt imports of US beef following the discovery of an American dairy cow infected with mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The disease is fatal to cows and can cause a deadly brain disease in people who eat tainted beef.

“We will lift the ban as soon as the US can assure us its dairy cows are free of mad cow disease,” said Rusman Heriawan, Indonesia’s vice agriculture minister. “It could be one month or one year. It depends on how long it takes to resolve this case.”

One would think the US government would immediately test beef to make sure it’s safe. But the USDA, which regulates the test, administers it to less than 1% of slaughtered cows. Worse, until 2007 it was illegal for private beef producers to test their own cows for the disease! Larger meat companies feared that if smaller producers tested their meat and advertised it as safe from mad cow disease, they too might be forced to test all their cows—so they persuaded USDA to block individual producers from doing the test. In 2007 a federal judge said this practice could no longer stand.

The highest risk occurs if animals or humans eat infected brain or nerve tissue. Meat unconnected to bone, milk, and hooves are supposed to be safe, but who knows for sure? The ultimate source of mad cow, of course, is the filthy and disease-ridden (not to mention inhumane) conditions in CAFOs, or concentrated animal feedlot operations.

In February, Taiwan began refusing meat products from the US because they contain ractopamine, a leanness- and growth-promoting drug used widely in pork and beef production in the United States. Taiwan has a zero-tolerance policy for the drug.

Related posts:

1. Indonesia suspends US beef imports over mad cow fears
2. How Safe is Cloned Meat?
3. Saudi Arabia Halts Shipments of U.S. Beef, USDA Agency Says
4. Opinion: Eat halaal! Organic is no substitute
5. Making sure our food is safe to eat

The British “debate” about meat, animal cruelty and ritual slaughter has become a proxy for deep fears about Muslims in our midst.

I am sitting in one of London’s finest Indian restaurants, Benares, in the heart of Mayfair. I’ve just placed an order for the “Tandoori Ratan” mixed-grill appetiser – a trio of fennel lamb chop, chicken cutlet and king prawn.

I’ll be honest with you: I’m pretty excited. Most of the upmarket restaurants in London do not cater for the city’s burgeoning Muslim population. Benares is one of the few exceptions: all of the lamb and chicken dishes on its menu are halal.

The restaurant opened in 2003 and its owner, Atul Kochhar, is a Michelin-starred chef. “Right from day one, we’ve kept our lamb and chicken halal,” Kochhar says. “It was a very conscious decision because I grew up in India, a secular country, where I was taught to have respect for all religions.” Kochhar, who is a Hindu, says Muslims make up “easily between 10 and 20 per cent” of his regular diners. It isn’t just a taste for religious pluralism that has dictated the contents of his menu; serving halal meat makes commercial, as well as cultural, sense.

To other, perhaps less tolerant types, however, the rise and rise of halal meat in the west and here in the UK, in particular, is a source of tension, controversy, fear and loathing. British Muslims are living through a period of halal hysteria, a moral panic over our meat. First there came 9/11, 7/7 and the “Islamic” terror threat; then there was the row over the niqab (face veil) and hijab (headscarf); now, astonishingly, it’s the frenzy over halal meat.

Last month, MPs in the Commons rejected a ten-minute-rule bill that would have made it mandatory for retailers to label all of the halal and kosher meat on sale and make it clear on the packaging that the animals were “killed without stunning”. The bill’s proponent, the Tory backbencher Philip Davies, claimed that the meat was being “forced upon” shoppers “without their knowledge”. It was defeated by the narrowest of margins – 73 votes to 70.

As is so often the case, the right-wing press is behind much of the fear-mongering and misinformation. “Britain goes halal . . . but no one tells the public,” screamed the front-page headline in the Mail on Sunday on 19 September 2010. The paper claimed that supermarkets, restaurants, schools, hospitals, pubs and big sporting venues such as Wembley Stadium were “controversially serving up meat slaughtered in accordance with strict Islamic law to unwitting members of the public”.

The following week, readers were treated to two more stories suggesting a sinister plot to inflict halal meat on innocent, animal-loving, non-Muslim Britons. “How 70 per cent of New Zealand lamb imports to Britain are halal . . . but this is NOT put on the label”, said the Daily Mail on 25 September 2010. “Top supermarkets secretly sell halal: Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose and M&S don’t tell us meat is ritually slaughtered,” proclaimed the Mail on Sunday the next day.

With the threat from terrorism receding, Britain’s Islam-baiters have jumped on the anti-halal bandwagon, and not just the neo-fascists of the British National Party and the English Defence League, which has a page on its website devoted to its (anti-) “halal campaign”, but mainstream commentators, too. The Spectator’s Rod Liddle – who once wrote a column entitled “Islamophobia? Count me in” – has demanded that halal meat be banned and called for a boycott of Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and the rest until they agree to stop stocking halal products. “I will buy no meat from supermarkets,” he wrote, rather melodramatically, back in 2010.

In this year’s French presidential election, candidates seemed to spend more time discussing halal meat than rising unemployment or the ballooning budget deficit. Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, alleged that “all the abattoirs in the Paris region sell halal meat without exception”, while the outgoing president, Nicolas Sarkozy, claimed that the halal issue was a “central concern” for French voters. (For the record, halal constitutes 2 per cent of all the meat sold in Paris.)

Last year in the Netherlands, the lower house of parliament approved a bill, introduced by the Party for the Animals (PvdD) and backed by the Islamophobe Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party, to have all ritually slaughtered meat, including halal and kosher, banned. The Dutch government refused to sign off on the bill but agreed to appoint a commission to consider tighter procedures for slaughter.

Stun guns

So, what is it about halal that provokes such anger and hysteria? The word literally means “lawful” and refers to any object – not just food – or action or behaviour that is deemed permissible under Islamic law.

For meat to be considered halal, three conditions must be met:

1) The animal must be healthy and uninjured and, crucially, it must be killed with a cut.
2) All the blood must be drained from the animal’s body.
3) The slaughterer must recite the appropriate Islamic prayer at the time of slaughter.

Islam, like Judaism, prescribes a single-cut method of slaughter: the animal is killed with a quick cut to the throat using a sharp knife. This allows the blood to drain out and, it is believed, makes the meat cleaner.

Naturally, the image of blood flowing out from the slit throat of a dead cow or sheep doesn’t help. But Muslims, like Jews, insist that so-called ritual slaughter is humane and pain-free because the animal quickly loses consciousness. “There is no time to start feeling any pain,” in the words of Dr Majid Katme, a former spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain.

In contrast, modern western non-ritual methods of slaughter demand that the animal be rendered unconscious before it is killed – usually by means of stunning, with a bolt gun, or electrocution. The stunning of livestock before slaughter has been compulsory in the EU since 1979 but most member states, including the UK, grant exemptions to Muslims and Jews.

So, for the moment, non-stunned halal meat is available in Britain, but contra the Mail on Sunday, there’s not enough of it to satisfy the growing demand. As a Muslim, I often have great difficulty in deciding where to eat out, given the lack of halal restaurants (hence my excitement at Benares). One recent survey suggested nine out of every ten UK Muslims adhere to the strict rules on halal eating – that is, they reluctantly opt for the salmon, and not the steak, when eating out.

Nonetheless, even though they represent just 3 per cent of the population, Britain’s two million Muslims tend to eat much more meat, on average, than their non-Muslim counterparts. Reports suggest that British Muslims consume a fifth of all red meat sold in the UK.

I have British Muslim friends who book their holiday flights on Emirates, whatever their end destination, specifically in order to be able to stop off in transit in Dubai and buy a Big Mac from the airport’s halal McDonald’s. Some Muslims, it seems, will travel to the corners of the earth in pursuit of halal food.

Is it any wonder that the UK halal meat market is estimated to be worth £3bn? Or that fast-food chains in the UK such as McDonald’s and Domino’s Pizza are working on trials offering halal meat?

Nando’s, the Portuguese mid-market restaurant chain, has perhaps gone furthest and fastest. One in five of its branches in the UK now serves halal-certified chicken, and I never cease to be amazed by the sea of hijabs among the diners at the Nando’s in south Harrow that has been my “local” for the past decade.

Then there’s KFC, which has responded to the raft of halal fried-chicken franchises (see Sophie Elmhirst’s piece on page 28) by running a halal trial in a hundred of its restaurants nationwide. On its UK website, KFC promises its customers that “our food is just as tasty and finger lickin’ good as it has always been”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it also includes a list of defensive answers to “frequently asked questions” such as “Why have you chosen my store?” and “Does this mean your animal welfare standards have changed?”.

Protecting animals is the cover behind which critics of halal meat often hide. This month, Professor Bill Reilly, a past president of the British Veterinary Association, condemned the rise in the number of animals killed in ritual slaughter as “not acceptable”. “[I]f we cannot eliminate non-stunning, we need to keep it to the minimum,” he wrote in the Veterinary Record. “This means restricting the use of halal and kosher meat to those communities that require it for their religious beliefs and, where possible, convincing them of the acceptability of the stunned alternatives.”

Opponents of ritual slaughter cite a raft of scientific studies that condemn the practice as painful and abusive. In a much-discussed report published in 2003, the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), an independent body that advised the UK government until its dissolution last year, argued that ritual methods of slaughter resulted in “significant pain and distress” for the animal and recommended that Muslims and Jews be banned from slaughtering livestock without stunning the animals first.

The FAWC’s findings were backed by a major EU-funded study “on issues of religious slaughter”, which concluded in 2010: “. . . it can be stated with the utmost probability that animals feel pain during the throat cut without prior stunning”.

Case closed? Not quite. Ruksana Shain, of the Muslim consumer group Behalal.org, says the scientific evidence against halal slaughter “isn’t conclusive”. But she would say that, wouldn’t she? OK. Well, consider the verdict of Joe Regenstein, professor of food science at Cornell University in the United States, who leads the university’s Kosher and Halal Food Initiative.

“Many of those attacking religious slaughter have no clue as to what is happening,” he tells me. “It is more of an Islamophobic issue, not an animal well-being issue.” Compared to modern, secular methods of slaughter, he says, “the traditional or Prophetic method might actually be equal or possibly superior” because the initial pain of the throat cut results “in the animal releasing large quantities of endorphins, putting it in a state of euphoria and numbness”. The cut thus serves as its own stun. The scientific evidence against halal slaughter, Regenstein says, “is extremely weak and has often been done poorly with an agenda driving a desired outcome”.

Missing defence

To pretend that Muslims do not care about animal welfare is unfair. There are several Quranic verses and sayings of the Prophet warning Muslims not to harm livestock; mistreatment of animals is considered a sin by the vast majority of Islamic scholars. In fact, advocates of halal slaughter can call on their own slew of scientific studies for support.

In 1978, research led by Wilhelm Schulze of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover showed that “the slaughter in the form of a ritual cut is, if carried out properly, painless in sheep and calves according to EEG [electroencephalography] recordings and the missing defensive actions [of the animals]”. The German Federal Constitutional Court based its 2002 verdict permitting ritual slaughter on this study.

Then there are the writings and research of Temple Grandin, professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University and one of America’s leading experts on the humane treatment and slaughter of livestock. She sees no difference between stunned and non-stunned slaughter if both are conducted properly and professionally. When a ritual slaughter is “done really right”, Grandin has said, “the animal seemed to act like it didn’t even feel it – if I walked up to that animal and put my hand in its face I would have got a much bigger reaction than I observed from the cut, and that was something which really surprised me”.

Remember, the “secular ways of slaughter”, as Regenstein points out, also have their downsides: “If the public were to discover that animals were subject to a pre-slaughter intervention – like having their skull cracked open, [being] electrocuted, or put in a gas chamber – they might not really like that either.” Shouldn’t consumers have a right to know which of these methods were used? Shouldn’t they be told about the danger of “mis-stunning”, which leaves the animal conscious and in pain, and occurs “relatively frequently”, according to a 2004 report by the European Food Safety Authority? Why not label all meat with detailed explanations of how exactly the animal in question was killed, and let consumers decide? “Why only pick on halal?” Ruksana Shain asks.

In the Commons debate on food labelling on 24 April, the Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, who is Jewish, criticised Philip Davies for singling out Muslims and Jews, saying he had “picked on two small minorities who share the way in which the meat they eat is killed”. However, Kaufman added that he would not have expressed his “total opposition to this bill” if it had cast its net wider to include other animals such as chickens that had been kept in “dreadful conditions”.

Preventing animal cruelty goes far beyond the “debate” about stunning or not stunning. And ironically, not all Muslims are opposed to stunning. There are two main organisations that regulate the halal food industry in the UK – the Halal Monitoring Committee, which has a “blanket ruling disallowing stunning in any form”, and the Halal Food Authority, which allows controlled stunning where the “animal or the birds do not die prior to slaughtering”, and which has certified KFC’s stunned chicken as halal.

Thus, most Muslim, and non-Muslim, participants in the heated debate over halal meat are ignoring a critical point. Data produced by the Meat Hygiene Service in 2004 suggested that roughly 90 per cent of halal slaughter in the UK involved stunning. In September 2011, the Food Standards Agency reported that “the majority of animals destined for the halal trade in both the red and white meat sectors are stunned before slaughter”. So what’s all the fuss about?

Consider the scare stories from the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, which automatically assume that all halal meat derives from the traditional,  non-stunned method of slaughter. What drove both papers’ coverage of the story? Are we seriously expected to believe that either the Mail or the Mail on Sunday gives a damn about animal rights? I struggle to recall the last occasion on which either tabloid splashed on the abuse or neglect of animals. More often than not, Mail columnists reserve rather harsh words (“deranged fanatics”, to quote Richard Littlejohn) for animal rights activists.

Crucially, if the hysteria over halal meat in Britain isn’t the product of Islamophobia, how do halal-obsessed politicians and journalists explain their silence on the subject of kosher meat? The 2003 Farm Animal Welfare Council report condemned both halal and kosher methods of slaughter. Yet, for instance, the Mail on Sunday, despite referring to “ritually slaughtered meat” in the headline of its “Britain goes halal . . .” report, went on to discuss only halal meat for the first 24 paragraphs of the piece before mentioning kosher meat – in passing – in the 25th paragraph.

The truth is that halal has become a proxy for much deeper fears and concerns about the presence of a growing and vocal Muslim population in our midst. “It’s being used as a political issue, especially by xenophobic and Islamophobic folks, to whip up a backlash against ‘the other’,” Regenstein says.

To pretend otherwise is naive, if not disingenuous. If this was a debate about animal welfare, it would be about all forms of slaughter; if it was a debate about ritual slaughter, it would address kosher, and not just halal, meat.

“Why only pick on halal?” It’s an important question in need of an urgent answer.

Related posts:

1. UK: BVA calls for total pre-stunned slaughter
2. Opinion: Halal Hysteria
3. UK: ‘Cruel’ halal slaughter methods under attack in the UK
4. Jordon: Princess Alia bint al-Hussein of Jordan calls for cattle stunning before slaughter
5. UK: MP Letter to Minister re Supermarkets selling Halal Meat

Saudi Arabia halted imports of U.S. beef, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Beef from the U.S. shipped on or after April 19 is not eligible for export to the country, the agency said today in a report on its website, without providing a reason for the ban.

The U.S. shipped 15.469 million pounds (7,017 metric tons) of beef to Saudi Arabia in 2011, government data show. That’s less than 1 percent of total U.S. beef exports last year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Campbell in Chicago atecampbell14@bloomberg.net

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Indonesia has become the first country to suspend US beef imports, following the discovery in California this week of a dairy cow infected with mad cow disease.

Indonesia has become the first country to suspend US beef imports, following the discovery in California this week of a dairy cow infected with mad cow disease.

According to Agence France-Presse, imports of boned US meat and innards would be banned, however the import of boneless meat remained unaffected.

“We will lift the ban as soon as the U.S. can assure us its dairy cows are free of mad cow disease,” the Associated Press quotedIndonesia’s Vice Agriculture Minister Rusman Heriawan as saying.

“It could be one month or one year. It depends on how long it takes to resolve this case.”

US Health authorities have said the diseased animal was never a threat to the nation’s food supply, in the first case of mad cow disease in the US since 2006.

Major buyers of US beef have said they will continue with American beef imports, meaning Indonesia’s partial ban will have little impact, according to Reuters.

There were no immediate signs that some of the biggest consumers, South Korea and Japan, would follow suit.

The EU has said that it has no plans to impose restrictions on imports of US beef products, according to AFP.

In 2011, the United States exported nearly 18,000 tones of beef products to Indonesia, valued at $28.2 million, according to AFP, citing figures from the US Meat Export Federation.

Indonesia imports most of its meat from Australia and New Zealand.

The US trade representative Ron Kirk said Thursday that there was “no reason to fear” that a Californian mad cow case had tainted food markets.

“There’s been no evidence (in) this one reported instance that any contaminated product has entered our food chain or any international food chain,” Kirk said.

“There is no reason, from my understanding of the analysis… for any consumer to be concerned about the consumption of US beef.

“Thus we would expect that Indonesia would quickly reopen its market for its consumers for US beef products.”

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5. Indonesia to lift import ban on U.S. beef

KUALA LUMPUR: The Halal Industry Development Corp (HDC) is in discussion with the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) to set up a Halal investment fund.

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A few hours before dawn, and even through the inky blackness it is clear this is no ordinary warehouse. Outside the building, gusts of wind send hay and straw flying, and the air is thick with the acrid sent of manure. Despite the darkness, I can see blood trickling down the gutters and a group of men clutching knives. Every so often, the eerie scene is punctured by the sound of lambs bleating. I am standing outside one of Britain’s abattoirs. To the casual observer, it is no different to any other slaughterhouse, though it’s strange to find one so close to a city centre that it’s within walking distance of Birmingham’s branch of Harvey Nichols.

I have visited several abattoirs for research purposes over the years, and by their very nature they’re noisy and messy places, with vats of blood and entrails the main difference here, though, is that this abattoir produces halal meat, in accordance with strict Islamic guidelines, Put simply, this means the animals killed here are not stunned with an electrical current — as they are at conventional slaughterhouses — to render them unconscious before they are dispatched.

Instead, they are fully conscious as their throats are slit by a slaughterman as he utters prayers to Allah to ‘bless’ the animal. The creature then bleeds to death in a process that can take more than 30 seconds. Killing an animal by cutting its throat without stunning is, in fact, illegal in this country. However, there is a legal loophole allowing this if it is being done for religious reasons — in other words, for the production of halal or kosher meat.

But this is an exemption that the British Veterinary Association and the Government’s advisers, the Farm Animal Welfare Council, are objecting to, saying this form of slaughter causes ‘intolerable cruelty’. They have repeatedly demanded that it be banned.

‘In the Holy Book, it says that the animal should hear  the prayers of Allah. If it’s unconscious, then it won’t be able to do that .’For their part, many Muslims claim it is their religious duty to eat only halal meat from unstunned animals. It is vital, they say, that the animal be slaughtered while fully conscious so it can receive Allah’s blessing.

Yet recent reports have suggested that it is not just devout Muslims who are consuming halal meat. several months ago, it was revealed that supermarkets such as Waitrose and Tesco, fast food chains including KFC’s, schools, hospitals, pubs and famous sporting venues such as Ascot and Wembley are serving up halal meat to unwitting customers, in the case of  KFC the same chicken slaughterhouse is supplying both Muslim and non Muslim with the same production, and the ironically it’s against the Sikh community to consume halal, yet one of their own, who is the owner of 2 sister’s is doing just that.

When I applied to be shown around a number of halal slaughterhouses, calls went unreturned and messages unanswered for weeks.So I decided to go undercover, posing as a potential buyer of halal meat for a fictional chain of high-quality ‘bespoke meats’. After four weeks, I finally managed to find an abattoir willing to show me the entire production process — from ‘squeals to meals’. Once I had outlined my fictional business proposal, a Birmingham-based company called Mr Meats agreed to show me around its abattoir. The owner, Masti Khan, was unfailingly polite and eager to please.

Mr Meats slaughters around 1,000 animals a night, mostly sheep and goats, but occasionally cattle, too. When I step inside, the first thing that hits me is the overpowering stench — a nasty, fatty smell that sticks in the throat. And then there’s the noise of machinery, interspersed with bleating animals and the slaughtermen uttering prayers. Hundreds of sheep and lambs are penned up in tiny stalls. From time to time, one tries — and fails — to escape by leaping over the bars of its pen. But then the same would be true of any abattoir. It is only when it comes to the actual slaughter that the differences become apparent. I watch — and secretly film — as the animals are herded onto a conveyor belt that leads them to the slaughterman, who is wearing a blue hairnet over his hair and beard in accordance with hygiene requirements .Holding one lamb at a time, he pulls back its head and slits the throat with a swift movement from his razor-sharp knife. Blood gushes everywhere as he recites the Islamic Bismillah prayer in Arabic: ‘In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful.’

One of the supervisors, who oversees the firm’s 50 or so largely Muslim employees, explained to me the religious principle behind this process. ‘Animals that are stunned are not halal. An animal that is unconscious is not going to hear the prayer ‘In the Holy Book, it says that the animal should hear the prayers of Allah. If it’s unconscious, then it won’t be able to do that. ’Lamb after lamb has its throat sliced open while fully conscious. They make pitiful bleating and gurgling sounds as they choke on their own blood. It’s a chilling sound that, once heard,  the reason for that is  UK law states that the animal must remain in situ for a minimum of 20 second.

During my two-hour visit, I watched  as lamb after lamb has its throat sliced open while fully conscious. They make pitiful bleating and gurgling sounds as they choke on their own blood. It’s a chilling sound that, once heard, stays with you for days afterwards. And then there’s the fact that the animals can witness each other being killed as they travel along the conveyor belt. Their hooves twitch wildly as they try to break fee , One lamb cries out for more than 20 seconds before it flops off the end of the conveyor belt and on to a rotating table. From there, it is shackled by its hind legs and hauled up to the ceiling on a hook, where it is left with a dozen others to ‘bleed out’ — another important part of the halal process. Of course, no slaughter of an animal is easy to watch. But it is hard to remain dispassionate as I watch dozens of still-conscious animals bleeding to death, the floor covered by an inch of warm, frothy blood. That is not to say that conventional abattoirs operate without fault. Earlier this year, I investigated an organic slaughterhouse, certified by the Soil Association, that had been secretly filmed by the welfare group Animal Aid, Inside the staff were caught beating animals and failing to stun them before cutting their throats and in the case of pigs over 30 % inhumanly transported.

Steve McGrath, chief executive of the Meat Hygiene Service, later said: ‘I have watched the film and have seen abject cruelty by the slaughtermen to the animals being killed; ineffective stunning; animals having their necks dislocated and heads decapitated before being fully bled; pigs being kicked; and shackling before stunning.’ Similar problems were found in every one of the seven slaughterhouses that Animal Aid secretly filmed, despite the presence of Government appointed vets. At least in this halal abattoir, I do not witness any deliberate mistreatment, in fact quite the opposite care was given prior to slaughter, It is impossible to find out how many animals are killed in halal abattoirs. The last Labour administration ordered the Meat Hygiene Service to stop keeping records. It was ostensibly a cost-cutting measure, but animal welfare groups fear it was to help disguise the rapid growth of the halal meat industry. However, the last available figures, from 2004, suggest that 114 million halal animals and 2.1 million kosher ones are killed annually. However, some halal producers — aware of the controversy that ritual slaughter can provoke — do stun their animals first, causing huge tensions within the Muslim community over the interpretation of what is, and isn’t, halal meat.

Some organisations, such as the Halal Monitoring Committee, post inspectors inside abattoirs, including Mr Meats, to ensure that animals are not stunned before their throats are cut.( all meat and poultry in the UK have their throat cut in every abattoirs)

Other organisations, however, say that stunning is acceptable. Nizar Boga, an Islamic scholar and former adviser on dietary issues at the London Central Mosque, says: ‘The Prophet told us about the need to care for animals, especially during slaughter. It’s absolutely forbidden in Islam for an animal to be aware of death during slaughter. Boga said ‘Organisations like the Halal Monitoring Committee are frightening decent Muslims for their own ends. They are making money from this.‘ Their interpretation of Islam on this issue is simply wrong. All of the top Muslim scholars around the world agree on this. Muslims have to respect animals.’

Either way, keeping track of what meat has or hasn’t come from stunned animals is hard to monitor, causing huge difficulties for British consumers of all faiths who would prefer to buy meat from animals that have been killed using the more humane method of slaughter. This is increasingly important now that most leading supermarkets, including Tesco and Asda, sell halal meat. Tesco, for example, launched a halal barbecue range last summer and reported strong sales. So which method of slaughter do the supermarket giants use?

A spokesman for Tesco says: ‘Pre-stunned meat produced to halal standards conforms to all our stringent hygiene and animal welfare standards.’

For their part, Morrison says that ‘all of our fresh meat is 100 per cent British and non-halal. Only our frozen New Zealand lamb is halal.’

As for Asda, the supermarket says its policy is ‘that all animals used for Asda brand products, halal or non-halal, are stunned’. But it turns out that is not quite the full story. I decided to visit six Asda stores in London that have specialist in store butcher’s shops, run as independent concessions operating under the name Haji Baba. The stores in Hounslow, Colindale, Walthamstow, Beckton and the Isle of Dogs confirmed to me that the meat they sold was ‘authentically halal’‘ The animals were not stunned,’ they said.

Though the store workers did not know the precise source of the meat, Masti Khan, the owner of Mr Meats, told me that he has supplied lamb to the six Asda stores I visited .Confronted with my findings, Asda told me: ‘Haji Baba is an independent company. The method of slaughter is a matter for Haji Baba and their customers. ‘All Asda brand products are stunned. The abattoir that the Daily Mail filmed inside is not used for Asda branded products.’ True but the fact that they are cleared though their cash tills it remains the property of  Asda stores, all  product sold in Asda should clearly be  labelled,  in their halal  butchery section does not high lights the source, even though  it is all non stun as advised by Haji Baba.

The key point is that wherever the meat comes from, consumers should have a clearer  labelled choice which is not the case in  Asda, one shopper I asked said we don’t know the source of our meat, we are told its nothing to do with them even though we are shopping in Asda, when you ask the butchery section they say that they only purchase from halal supplier and that’s it , how can we be sure not only  about stun and non stun what about stringent hygiene check’s ?  Yet given that there is no legal requirement to label whether meat comes from stunned or unstunned animals, the chances are you’ve already eaten halal killed in the way I witnessed — or soon will do, as 40% of the fresh poultry in the UK and 30% fresh meat in the UK is slaughtered  halal.

In Europe, pressure is building to standardise slaughtering practices to ensure that the majority of all animals are killed without stunning In France, for example, 80 per cent of all sheep are killed without stunning, and almost all animals in Belgium are slaughtered  while fully conscious. And this process is beginning to accelerate in Britain, too. Consumer and animal welfare groups claim this is illegal because the exemption from animal welfare laws granted to Muslims and Jews is being extended across the whole meat industry, purely to cut costs ‘This is no longer about religion,’ says Peter Stevenson of Compassion In World Farming, ‘The exemption in the law was not granted to the food industry to streamline its production processes and make life easier for itself —this is largely exploited by non Muslim companies to tap into this growing halal market. ‘We are not opposed to halal as long as the animals are stunned before they are killed.’ The European Parliament decided to try to force the food industry to label halal and kosher meat as coming from ‘unstunned  animals’. The legislation faces an uphill struggle, as all EU member states will have to approve the legislation before it can become law.

James Paice, minister of state at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, says that, in principle, the Government supports labelling, he told the House of Commons: ‘This is a highly emotive issue, and I understand the demand for labelling, ‘The Government would like all animals to be properly stunned before they are bled to slaughter. There is a discussion at European level about food information regulations, but we do not believe that is the right vehicle, we will consult on implementation of the European animal welfare regulations, and the labelling issue will certainly be examined as part of that, ’Whatever your beliefs on the rights and wrongs of religious slaughter, surely we should all welcome the choice over whether we buy such meat, Support for clear labelling of all halal meat also comes from an unlikely source.

When I confronted Masti Khan, owner of Mr Meats slaughterhouse, after my visit, he said: ‘Consumers should be given the choice. I have nothing to hide. ‘This is a multi-racial country, and people have different religions. It’s wrong for supermarkets not to clearly label all halal meat weather they coming from animals that have not been pre-stunned or not.’ As some of my Sikh friends here in Birmingham do not want to eat any form halal, we as Muslim respect their rights not to be forced to eat halal meat or any of else be forced to consume halal without their knowledge.

In my opinion the non Muslim companies are causing the problem they are forcing UK to consume halal , the Muslim companies want clearer labelling and non Muslim ccompanies don’t so that they have a piece of the halal market, profit above principles.

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Dr. K. Ravindranath, Chairman & MD, Global Hospitals Group, said “With about two billion Muslims worldwide and a major number of international health travellers coming to Global Healthcity from the Islamic nations, we see Halal certification as a form of approval that boosts our patients’ trust and confidence in our range of hospital services. To earn the certification, Global Health City had to meet strict Islamic guidelines dealing with hygiene & dietary regulations of global standards.”

“This Halal certification will further help in boosting medical value travel in our country and showcasing our world class infrastructure.” He further added.

Mr. Mohamed Jinna, CEO, Halal India stated “We have great heritage for service and hospitality in India which also signifies that we can take good care of patients. The state of art technologies available in medical care is just perfect for overseas patients.  All we need to do is understand their culture and custom so that we accommodate them well and make them feel truly at home”  This way we can respect their values and belief and at the same time cater to this niche market in India.”

Global Health City is one of the few hospitals in the world to have Halal certification. Halal, an Arabic word meaning “lawful or permitted”, is the certification given by the Islamic Development Department of Malaysia. The concept of Halal, is not just being applied to food, but it includes services and infrastructure as per rules in Quran. Global Health City provides special desk for such patients which includes patient managers and co-ordinators who are caring and  knowledgeable about the language, culture and expectations of the patient from the Islamic world. The hospital provides prayer room with Friday prayers, customized cuisine & Arabic TV channels in the rooms.

Speaking on the occasion Mr. Chandra Sekhar, Executive Director, Global Hospital Group said “As with the concept of Halal Friendly Medical Tourism it’s a proven set of services which helps hospital attract more and more patients from SAARC & S.E Asia region as well as from various other countries. The biggest example of countries which has already implemented this concept is Thailand, Singapore, Australia, South Africa, UK and Malaysia.”

GLOBAL HEALTH CITY

Global Health City, Chennai is a 500 bedded super specialty tertiary care facility, with a capacity to expand to 1000 beds. It renders 360 degree advanced tertiary healthcare services with multi-super speciality and multi-organ transplant services. With the finest combination of expertise, experience, state-of-the art technology and well coordinated team work, every step is aimed at ensuring excellence in patient care.

The Global Hospitals Group started with its first Hospital a decade ago in Hyderabad. Today, it has nine hospitals with over 2000 beds, strategically spread across the country with branches now in Bangalore and Chennai and many more in advanced stages of planning and implementation, one such being the Mumbai facility which is proposed to be operational by the end of the current financial year. Each unit is a world class tertiary care multi super specialty Hospital with facilities matching the best in the world and offering advanced patient care of international standards.

Halal India

Halal India (HI) is as an Independent Certification body which is recognized by the Government of India. Halal India is one of the established Halal Certification body in India. Halal India Certification is becoming more relevant in today’s market mainly because people are more aware of the Halal concept it is not just about religious related matters but it extends to the products or services being deemed safe for consumption as well as have health benefits.

Halal India is recognized by IHIA (International Halal Integrity Alliance, Malaysia) who is a partner of the Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). It has been recognized by the 57 OIC (Organization of Islamic Conference) Countries, in principle member with the World Halal Council and Intertek Testing Services, a testing company, are its global partners.

Hospitals eye ‘halal’ certification to attract patients from Middle East

Pushpa Narayan, Times of India

CHENNAI: There are two things that worry almost every patient from Islamic countries who come to Indian hospitals: the meat they eat and the direction of Mecca. With more than 75% of the medical tourists being from the Middle East, hospitals are eyeing ‘halal’ certification to make them feel at home.

On Monday, Chennai-based Global Health Citysaid it has became the first in the country to receive the ‘halal’ certification from the Halal Development Authority. The certification would mean they get ‘halal’ meat in food and have ‘quiblah’ (the direction of Mecca) signs in every room and prayer hall. Muslims offer prayers facing ‘quiblah.’

At least five leading hospital groups in the country including Apollo Hospitals and Fortis are in talks with the authority, said Halal India general manager Mohamed Noman Lateef. In Chennai, Mehta Hospitals and Lifeline Hospitals have also sent applications for the certification.

Halal India, is an independent Halal Certification body which is recognised by the Indian government and deals with certification of food, cosmetics and drugs as per the Shariah law. Halal is anything that is legal or lawful for Muslims. In terms of meat, halal applies to the kind of meat (pork is banned), their health condition and the way they are killed. The butcher must make a recitation to God and cut the jugular vein, carotid artery and the windpipe with a sharp knife. The animal can’t be stunned before it is killed.

To ensure the meat used in the Global hospital’s kitchen is ‘halal,’ officials from Halal India visited the slaughter house from where the meat is purchased. “It’s not just about food or prayer hall, it’s about lifestyle. For any Muslim it is important that any business performed in their daily lives is clean, hygienic and not detrimental to either their health or wellbeing as specified in the religious text. In that sense, it is a new benchmark for quality,” said Halal India business development manager Sheetal Bajaj.

Hospital chairman Dr K Ravindranath said Halal certification was a form of approval that boosts patients’ confidence. “To earn the certification, Global Health City had to meet strict Islamic guidelines dealing with hygiene and dietary regulations of global standards.” The hospital’s international business vice-president M Zakariah Ahmed said after Joint Commission International (JCI) this would be one of the biggest certification process hospitals in the country are aiming for.

Every room will also have a sticker that gives the exact direction of Mecca. “I tell every patient the food is halal. But I feel they would be happy to see the certification,” said Global Hospital’s international patients executive Vireesh Singh. “We tell them that we make public announcements for prayer and ensure that we give women a separate place during prayer,” he said.

Transplant surgeon Dr Madhu Shankar agrees. “People from the Middle East have a different culture. We don’t enter the female patient’s room without their permission. A female nurse will walk in first and seek permission for a male doctor’s entry,” he said.

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The Economist Intelligence Unit carried out 13 in-depth interviews with executives of companies from the Shari’ah industry to produce the report, The Shari’ah-Conscious Consumer: Driving Demand, commissioned by Kuwait Finance House. “The research highlights the global nature of this business and the evolving dynamics across different regions,” said Trevor McFarlane, Senior Editor for Continental Europe, the Middle East and Africa for the Economist Intelligence Unit, who directed the study.

The study is based on an online survey of 398 executives worldwide. Among the key findings of the report:

• The Shari’ah-conscious consumer market is growing worldwide. More than one-half (54 per cent) of survey respondents say that the market for Sharia-compliant products and services is already significant for their business. Asked the same question but for their business in three years’ time, the number of respondents giving the same answer jumped to 68 per cent. Businesses are seeing this translate into sales: over one-half (51 per cent) of respondents are currently enjoying annual growth in revenue of at least 5 per cent, while 34 per cent are registering higher than 15 per cent growth.
• Religious conviction is a major driver of demand. When asked to select the top three factors influencing demand, most (56 per cent) respondents chose the growing acceptance of Islamic precepts. Muslim population growth in both Muslim (46 per cent) and non-Muslim (39 per cent) countries were also cited as important drivers of demand.
• The market divides into three geographic segments: Muslim majority countries, “mixed culture” countries (eg in South-east Asia), and non-Muslim countries. Muslim-majority countries are seeing the fastest-growing demand. When asked to select the top three regions where Shari’ah-oriented demand is currently growing strongest, 70 per cent of respondents chose the Arabian Gulf countries, followed by North Africa (36 per cent) and South Asia (34 per cent). In three years’ time, respondents see largely the same trend: around 62 per cent selected the Arabian Gulf countries, while 41 per cent picked North Africa and 38 per cent see growth in demand coming from South Asia.
• Halal food and Islamic finance are the mainstays of the sector, with halal-friendly tourism and Islamic fashion showing future promise. Respondents see food and finance as having the fastest growth, both now and in three years’ time. Improving standards related to issues such as labelling and marketing communications could help to accelerate that growth. More than four-fifths (81 per cent) of respondents say labelling products as halal is an important factor for consumers.
• Lack of professional management among product and service providers is a major barrier to growth. A significant proportion (44 per cent) of respondents says that poor management and insufficient market awareness on the part of producers holds back development of this sector. Almost as many (42 per cent) say that a lack of convincing branding for products and services blocks growth. Standardisation and certification, a troublesome issue within the global market for halal food, is seen by industry experts as a must for further development of the halal food segment.
• Islamic finance is seen as an important enabler for the broader industry. More than one-half (55 per cent) of survey respondents cite access to Shari’ah-compliant finance as important to their business. An even higher percentage (58 per cent) says that easy access to such finance is crucial for their customers as well.
• Demand for Islamic bonds (or Sukuk) is expected to grow. Nearly 30 per cent of survey respondents say they expect demand for Sukuk to grow strongly, a view shared especially by those who work in finance. With international banks, particularly European ones, providing less loan capital in order to meet stricter risk management guidelines, banks and other lenders in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are expected to take up the slack. Their Shari’ah-compliant lending is expected to focus on financing infrastructure and construction. This points toward growing future demand for Islamic bonds to finance large-scale projects, particularly around the Gulf.
• In future, firms will have to show that they share the values of integrity and community to which Muslims aspire if they are to win the Islamic market. When considering what best promotes demand for goods and services that comply with Shari’ah over half (52 per cent) of survey respondents point to a reputation for honesty and integrity on the part of the company offering the goods or services.

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