France: ANSA Joins ASIDCOM and Warns European Muslims

ANSA Joins ASIDCOM and Warns European Muslims ‘You are what you eat’ and not to take responsibility lightly 

ansalogoThe Association of Non-Stun Abattoirs teamed up with ASIDCOM  and warned Muslims at the Association Awareness, Information and Consumer Defence Muslims seminar launch of their Traditional Halal Butchers Survey: Northern France in LILLE on Sunday 13 Jan 2013.

M/S Hanen Rezgui the chair persons presented a detailed  report on the halal Meat and poultry industry  in the north of France.

The ASIDCOM report highlighted  89%  Muslim consumers  surveyed  said that they were aware of fraud in the French halal market, and about 26% identified butchers as primary responsible for the halal fraud . In the absence of any formal definition of the word halal in French law.

Muslim consumers are unanimous: 100% support requiring that a halal standard must ensure good animal welfare while respecting the religious requirements in terms of religious slaughter and processing of animals. Similarly, 97% of the respondents say that the standard must ensure that the halal meat comes from animals slaughtered without any stunning.” .

ASIDCOM:  Founded in 2006 ) to the Prefecture of the Bouches-du-Rhône and present in several cities in France.

The report stated The Muslim consumer needs to take more responsibility to assure that the meat they purchase meets their standard.

The advice that ASIDCOM  gives to Muslim consumer is that “any meat sold on the French market, labeled halal or not, should be considered as coming from a slaughter with stunning, unless the seller is able to provide material evidence attesting otherwise.”

Mohammed Saleem  said in his key note speech ‘ANSA long term over-arching goal of ANSA is to safeguard the availability of halal foods, especially meats, for our generation and for generations to come.

Muslims must ask themselves: Why do we need to settle for something that is surrounded by doubt, when we are allowed under the law to produce and consume the true halal as prescribed by the divine power.

Almost all of the scholars of Fiqh, Tafsir and Hadith have confirmed – either implicitly or explicitly – that, the default ruling is that meat and poultry is haram to consume until it is confirmed that the process of Zabihah has met these minimum conditions:-

•Slaughtered by hand by a Muslim or an ‘Ahl-Kitaab’, i.e., a person of the book who is practicing sincerely his or her Biblical faith.

•The animal is conscious and alive at the time of Zabihah

•The Tasmiyah (in the name of Of one god – God is Great said in Arabic) is recited individually at the time of the Zabihah.

One thing is for muslims will not compromise their emaan over price and quality’

The detail survey is available from http://www.asidcom.org.