Washington, DC (THE
MEDIA LINE) – Kuwaiti markets are saturated with imported meat with
forged certificates wrongly identifying the food as halal, or
permissible for consumption by Islamic law, a Kuwaiti researcher said
on Tuesday.
Dr. Hani Al-Mazidi, a technological researcher at the
Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, said there was an
overabundance of official bodies trying to supervise the implementation
of halal regulations, and as a result they were all questioning the
others’ validity, according to the Kuwait Times.
Several
processed meats analyzed by the institute were found to contain fats
and gelatins with “suspicious origins,” including substances from pigs,
which are prohibited for consumption by Muslims.
The halal industry has an estimated global turnover of $580 billion a year.
The
swell in demand for halal products has given rise to fraud, where
companies and exporters are labeling foods as halal, when, in fact,
this is not the case.
The problem is causing Muslims worldwide to
rethink the halal certification process and minimize instances in which
Muslim beliefs are being exploited for the sake of making profit.
Up until recently, there was no centralized body defining the standards of halal and accrediting certification organizations.
The
World Halal Forum recently established an International Halal Integrity
Alliance, which aims to counter halal deception and standardize
regulations.
Halal is an Arabic word meaning permissible, and
refers to anything permitted according to Shari’a, or Muslim law, as
opposed to haram, which means unlawful or forbidden.
Foods that
are haram, and not permitted for consumption by Muslims, include swine
or pork and their by-products, animals improperly slaughtered or dead
before slaughtering, animals killed in the name of other than Allah
(God), alcohol and intoxicants, carnivorous animals, birds of prey and
land animals without external ears, blood and by-products of blood and
foods contaminated by any of the above products.
