Why a Swiss Village Makes Halal Pastry
By Juliane von Mittelstaedt
A
Swiss village is churning out puff pastry that adheres to strict
Islamic food guidelines and is exported half way across the world. It’s
all part of the growing global demand for halal food products.
Walter Leisi is holding two rolled cylinders of dough in his
hands, each wrapped in glossy foil, one labeled in French and the other
in Arabic. Each package contains the same puff pastry, a concoction of
196 layers of flour, margarine, butter, water and salt — the same, but
for one difference, a tiny but decisive difference: one is preserved
with alcohol and the other with potassium sorbate.
They taste the same, but they smell somewhat different. The dough
preserved with potassium sorbate smells “slightly more cheesy,” says
Walter Leisi, 63, a jolly Swiss man wearing a purple short-sleeved
shirt and a gold watch. Leisi is the director of a Nestlé plant in the
Swiss town of Wangen bei Olten. He is also the inventor of Leisi-Quick,
the world’s first ready-made puff pastry, which is packaged on baking
paper and sold in refrigerated, but not frozen, form and is thus ready
for baking. The factory produces more than 41,000 tons of freshly made
dough a year, an enormous quantity.
But in the case of Leisi-Quick, the real issue is not taste or smell, but God’s will.
More and more Muslims are choosing a devout lifestyle, and this
includes strict observance of the dietary restrictions in the Koran,
which classify food as being either “halal” or “haram,” allowed or
forbidden. Pork, blood and alcohol are haram. This sounds
straightforward enough, but in an era of modern food production,
observing these restrictions is anything but easy. Forbidden foods are
hidden in products like bouillon, gelatin and spice mixtures. Many
preservatives are made with alcohol, the glue used in packaging can
contain animal fats and pig bristles can turn up in production
equipment. The alcohol used in puff pastry is haram, and although it
evaporates during baking, a small residue is left behind.
Many Islamic countries have strict rules requiring the use of halal
food products, and they have even become a global trend in recent
years. The current market is valued at an estimated €350 billion ($508
billion). Muslims make up one-fifth of the earth’s population, and as
their purchasing power grows, so does their religious self-confidence.
Islamic countries, especially Malaysia, are fueling the demand. It’s
now even possible to get mineral water and rice that is halal. Entire
research institutes are dealing with the question of whether the
additives E100, E407 and E418 are permitted for devout Muslims.
Lipstick, medications and skin creams can also be haram. This is about
religion, undoubtedly, but even more about business.
As a result, anything that is not halal could soon no longer be global.
This explains why Nestlé, the world’s largest food corporation, with
€64.9 billion ($94 billion) in sales last year, now adheres to rules
that date back to the 7th century in 75 of its 480 factories worldwide.
The Swiss are the biggest producers of processed halal food, mainly for
Southeast Asia and the Middle East, earning €2.4 billion ($3.5 billion)
from sales of such products last year — more than with organic food,
the other, Western trend. To keep it that way, products are tested,
certified and regularly inspected by “Islamologists” working with
high-tech analysis equipment.
Even Europe is gradually adjusting, as the demand for halal products
grows in the double-digit percentage range each year. Last year, when
McDonald’s opened its first European restaurant with halal burgers on
the menu — in London — sales rose immediately. The British
supermarket chains Tesco and Sainsbury’s have installed separate halal
shelving and are targeting Muslim customers in their advertising. And
for the past two years Nestlé has eliminated pork, blood and alcohol
from the production process in seven European factories, including a
sausage plant in France, a Nescafé plant in Germany and a powdered milk
plant in Spain.
Because Nestlé has discovered that puff pastry is a strong seller
among Muslims, globalization has now reached Wangen bei Olten, a town
of 4,983 inhabitants that recently fought a heated but ultimately
unsuccessful battle against the construction of a mosque minaret.
Walter Leisi, whose father began producing ready-made cake dough and
puff pastry in 1938, and whose childhood bedroom was once next to the
kneading machine, now writes terms like “Quality Monitoring Scheme” on
a white board and has a certificate issue by the Muslim Institute of
the Paris Mosque for “Pâte à tarte sans Alcool (halal).”
Much has changed since the invention of Leisi-Quick. The former
family-owned business has since been sold to Nestlé, and the demand for
puff pastry is no longer determined by the French plum harvest, but by
Ramadan.
The company sells most of its puff pastry to France, the land of
the quiche. If the halal version is successful, Nestlé plans to offer
more halal products soon, including shortcrust pastry and pizza dough.
“Nowadays,” says Leisi, “this is part of having a well-rounded product
line.”
He puts on a white coat and a cap and begins a tour of the factory,
past shiny chrome-plated kneading machines and conveyor belts traveling
in every direction, 24 hours a day, carrying dough in various forms:
flattened, in small mounds and rolled up.
Halal or not halal, the differences are not visible. The machines
are the same. They have to be cleaned regularly with alcohol, which
evaporates after 15 minutes. Then, in accordance with the
Islamologist’s instructions, another batch of halal puff pastry can be
produced. “It’s really quite simple,” says Walter Leisi, and smiles.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
