Muslims regularly consuming Haram without knowing: expert

By: Gillian Duncan

Source: http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/retail/golden-halal-opportunity-beckons-at-heart-of-islamic-world#page2

Christien Meindertsma, an artist based in the Netherlands, once set about tracing all of the products made using the parts of one animal.

Three years later, in 2009, she published a book called Pig 05049 that proved pieces of one pig, the 05049 of the title, ended up in 185 separate products, from toothpaste to dough improver and desserts. The pig is an animal considered haram, or not to be consumed, by Muslims.

Industry specialists say Meindertsma’s book offers a lesson for everyone about how the processing of products has changed in the globalised world – and why it is important to know what is in the food we eat and items we use.

Halal, which means permissible, not only covers food and drink, but anything that can be used in daily life, including drugs and cosmetics.

The size of the halal industry globally is enormous – worth an estimated US$2.1 trillion (Dh7.71tn) annually and growing.

Yet the UAE’s industry is tiny in comparison, at just $550 million. However, it has a proportionally bigger share of halal trade, which was estimated to be $3.6 billion in 2010 and projected to grow to $8.4bn in 2020.

Initially, halal referred to meat that had been slaughtered according to Islamic law, by a Muslim saying a prayer. It then expanded to cover ready-to-eat food containing meat and, finally, all other products.

However, awareness about what is halal is lacking in some parts, according to Asad Sajjad, the chief executive and secretary general of the Halal Development Council and the founder and director of the International Halal Federation.

Mohammed Jinna, the chief executive of Halal India, says halal should cover everything.

“Your toothpaste and your soap and your creams and your lipsticks – everything should be halal.”

But even food one might expect to be halal by its nature is not necessarily permitted.

Take sugar, for example, a plant-based product that is processed using bone char, charcoal made from animal bones – usually from cattle or pigs. If it is the latter, the end product will not be halal.

And even meat that is permitted, such as chicken, is sometimes not halal. In some big industrial chicken plants, the birds are fed proteins and injected with water to make them gain weight.

“The protein is used so that water retains in the body. Otherwise it will just drain out. The protein is made of pig,” says Mr Sajjad.

In the Emirates, there are a handful of big halal food producers, such as Emirates Poultry and Al Islami. But the largest halal food producers are based in the West.

Take Nestlé, headquartered in Switzerland. It is not only the world’s biggest food company – it is also the world’s largest halal food maker.

In fact, 85 per cent of the products in the $2.1tn halal market – which makes up 20 per cent of the total global food industry – are produced in Brazil, the United States, Canada, Argentina, France, Australia, Holland and New Zealand, says Mr Sajjad.

“These are the countries in the West. In the East, the biggest halal producer is Thailand,” which is not even a Muslim country, he points out.

In fact, the only Muslim countries that produce halal food in any significant quantities are Indonesia and Malaysia.

“I have been to Asia and the Middle East and I try to convince them to compete in the non-Muslim countries, and they say, ‘we can’t compete because the quality is not there,’” says Farhan Tufail, the chief executive of Halal Certification Services, based in Switzerland.

But, he adds, some foreign companies, such as Nestlé, are investing heavily in halal production in Muslim countries and for a simple reason: the halal market is booming and the companies want to be prepared. They can buy the ingredients to produce halal food cheaper in the Middle East than in the West.

But industry specialists say awareness about halal in the UAE and the region is not as widespread as some might expect.

“Here, if you go to any store in the UAE and ask, ‘Do you have halal biscuits? Do you have halal confectionery?’ they don’t know. The people selling food have no awareness. The buyers have no awareness,” says Mr Sajjad.

But that is changing.

The UAE has in recent months sought to boost its influence in the halal food industry and was appointed late last year to chair the Halal Food Technical committee designed to set standards for the industry worldwide.

The Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology is now working on guidelines to unify standards for halal food and cosmetics, which are expected to be applied in 57 Islamic countries in the next three years.

Despite the current furore over horse meat labelled as beef in Europe, a certification system is key to boosting consumer confidence in halal products, say the experts.

“You can find a lot of sugar being certified in Singapore and Malaysia. There is a lot of awareness in these countries,” says Mr Jinna.

Regulations for halal certification bodies in the UAE are being drawn up and are expected to be issued in the next six months.

They will be compulsory for any organisation wanting to become a halal certification body.

If they comply with the rules they will be accredited.

Only with the implementation of a comprehensive certification system will people be sure about whether the products they are using and consuming are halal.

Halal food certification worries UK Muslims

By: OnIslam & News Agencies

Source: OnIslam.net

LANCASHIRE – Following recent fiasco surrounding pork traces found in halal food, the relation between Lancashire Council of Mosques and the city council has come to a deadlock after raising concerns about the certification of halal food supplied to schools.

“The Muslim community of Lancashire is utterly shocked that the supplier of pork contaminated products is certified by the Halal Food Authority,” the statement issued by Lancashire Council of Mosques was cited by The Asian Image website on Thursday, February 8.

“We urge communities and schools across Lancashire to boycott HFA-accredited products until further investigation.”

The stalemate started three months ago when the organization urged parents not to allow their children to eat school meals provided by Lancashire County Council which contain meat.

The warning came because of concerns over whether halal products were properly accredited by the authorities approved by the council.

The problem aggravated after traces of pork were found in food deliveries to prisons by a local halal meat supplier.

The incident was made public after a spokeswoman for the Food Standards Agency said the halal meat supplied to prisons involved traces of pork.

The discovery comes after horsemeat was found in beefburgers stocked by major British supermarket chains, with one brand of burger coming in at 29 percent horse.

Muslims do not eat pork and consider pigs and their meat filthy and unhealthy to eat.

After the finding the Lancashire Council of Mosques called for an investigation into the halal food industry.

Deadlock

Despite halal food scandal, Lancashire County Council rejected the mosques’ request, stating it will continue to provide meat supplied by the HFA, one of three halal accreditation agencies.

“The only products we purchase through the HFA are halal chicken products which come from a supplier which only processes chickens on site, so we have no concerns about cross-contamination with pork,” Roger Eakhurst, assistant director of Lancashire county commercial services, said.

Geoff Driver, leader of Lancashire County Council, agreed.

“I am disappointed that the Lancashire Council of Mosques is asking parents not to allow their children to have halal meals provided in our school kitchens,” he said.

“I am prepared to discuss this, but the council of mosques must recognize that the council will not provide meat from animals that were not stunned before slaughter.”

The Muslim authority, however, said it felt vindicated about its previous concerns and may yet warn parents away from all school meals.

“We only trust meat certified by the Halal Food Committee,” Moulana Hanif, a member of the council’s halal sub-committee, said.

Britain is home to a sizable Muslim minority, estimated at nearly 2.5 million.

The concept of halal, — meaning permissible in Arabic — has traditionally been applied to food.

Muslims should only eat meat from livestock slaughtered by a sharp knife from their necks, and the name of Allah, the Arabic word for God, must be mentioned.

Who should regulate kosher and halal food?

By: economist.com

Source: The Economist

KEEPING the government’s nose out of anything with a religious whiff is one of America’s founding principles. With this in mind on January 31st a federal district judge in Minnesota dismissed a lawsuit contending that Hebrew National, a big American meat-products brand, fraudulently labelled its hot dogs “100% kosher”. Critics had claimed that the meat used did not meet kosher requirements. The judge, however, ruled that since kosher is a standard “intrinsically religious in nature”, under the first amendment it was none of the court’s business. Triangle K, the certifying body that gave the wieners the kosher seal of approval, and its Orthodox rabbis, would have to rebut the critics themselves. Unhappy customers could always shop elsewhere.

Few Western countries have laws explicitly regulating kosher or halal products—chiefly meat produced by the ritual slaughter of animals, subject to particular standards of health or hygiene. Governments prefer to rely on private companies and market forces to do the job. If people find out certified items are not as pure as they claim to be, they stop buying them. When governments do get involved it is usually under the auspices of consumer protection or food safety. They have been wary of wading in on specifically religious grounds. But with Muslim populations swelling throughout Europe and the business of religiously approved goods booming, the question of how to regulate such products is becoming more urgent.

America has been battling with this issue for decades. Of its 50 states, 22 have introduced kosher-fraud laws over the past century. Anxious about the industry’s rampant corruption (half of all “kosher” food was not), price-fixing and bitter rivalries (including drive-by shootings in poultry markets), New York started the trend in 1915 with a bill saying that food labelled fit for Jews must comply with “orthodox Hebrew religious requirements”. But in the past 20 years courts in Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey and New York have deemed such laws unconstitutional. New Jersey firms must merely produce documentary proof that their products are kosher.

Private certifiers have stepped into the breach. Five regulatory heavyweights (not including Triangle K) dominate the market, certifying products the world over. All the main kosher meat producers in America today adhere to the same stringent standard, “glatt kosher”, which includes especially careful examination of animals’ organs for any signs of illness that would render the meat unacceptable.

The only notable exception to this is Hebrew National, says Timothy Lytton of Albany Law School, who has written a book about kosher regulation (Hebrew National says it has “always stood by its kosher distinction and status” and a Triangle K rabbi says it made “kosher meat available to the greater American public, and not just the glatt consumer”.) The certifying bodies do a much better job than the government did, says Mr Lytton. They pounce on mistakes and are swift to admit their own. America’s kosher food industry generates $12 billion in sales a year so no one wants to lose customers because of sloppiness.

In Israel, by contrast, the state is closely involved, promoting the Chief Rabbinate’s kosher label as the only acceptable one. But those standards are the lowest common denominator, says Mr Lytton, and many religious Jews find them too lax. They insist on stricter checks from private companies which costs extra.

Still, Jews are more united than Muslims about the exact nature of their religion’s dietary rules. Jewish law leaves no doubt that stunning animals before slaughter is prohibited. Muslims disagree about that. Hundreds of halal-certification bodies operate, with varying standards and logos. They differ in their methods of slaughter. Some countries allow products containing a small percentage of non-halal ingredients to be classed as halal. Others do not. “Halal” pies and pasties recently served to Muslim prisoners in British jails turned out to contain traces of pork—but came from a supplier approved by the Halal Food Authority, one of two main British guarantors (it has now delisted the firm).

Tayyabs, a popular Punjabi curry house in the London borough of Tower Hamlets, Britain’s most Muslim area, does not even bother with certificates. The manager says that he knows and trusts his suppliers and his customers know and trust him.

That may work for a small, local restaurant but multinational firms cannot be so nonchalant. Last month McDonald’s and one of its franchises in Dearborn in south-east Michigan, which has the country’s highest concentration of Arab-Americans, paid $700,000 to settle allegations (which it denies) that it had falsely advertised its food as meeting Islamic dietary laws.

A worldwide standard for the $700 billion halal food market is one idea. Muslim countries, where governments see ruling on religious matters as part of their job, are keen to help. JAKIM, Malaysia’s department for Islamic development, takes responsibility for upholding halal standards. Misuse of the halal label can mean jail. The Sultanate of Brunei is proud of its mark, the Brunei Halal Brand. It wants to certify products around the world. That would help non-Muslim producers, such as Brazil, already one of the world’s largest exporters of halal meat, which are keen to expand in Muslim markets.

The importance of the halal label spreads well beyond food. Many of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims want reassurances that medicines and make-up, for example, are free from animal products or alcohol. Websites are abuzz with the news of a halal nail varnish produced in Poland. Just don’t test it on animals.

Pork found in “Halal” pies at UK prison

By: OnIslam & News Agencies

Source: OnIslam.net

LONDON – A supplier of halal meat in Britain has been suspending after traces of pork were found inside meat pies and pasties submitted to prison, sparking fury from Muslims.

“This is an absolutely unacceptable situation and one which we regret greatly,” Justice Minister Jeremy Wright told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Traces of pork were found in food deliveries to prisons by a local halal meat supplier.

Discovering the issue, Wright ordered all prisons to withdraw halal-labeled products immediately.

“Clearly this must be distressing for those affected and they can be reassured we are doing everything we can to resolve the situation,” he said.

“The Prison Service is investigating this as a matter of urgency.”

Muslims do not eat pork and consider pigs and their meat filthy and unhealthy to eat.

The incident was made public after a spokeswoman for the Food Standards Agency said the halal meat supplied to prisons involved traces of pork.

“The FSA has been informed that a number of meat pies and pasties supplied to UK prisons which were labeled and served as Halal contained traces of pork DNA,” she said.

“The local authority (where the supplier is based) is investigating how this contamination came about and whether these products have been distributed further across the UK.”

The discovery comes after horsemeat was found in beefburgers stocked by major British supermarket chains, with one brand of burger coming in at 29 percent horse.

Britain is home to a sizable Muslim minority, estimated at nearly 2.5 million.

The concept of halal, — meaning permissible in Arabic — has traditionally been applied to food.

Muslims should only eat meat from livestock slaughtered by a sharp knife from their necks, and the name of Allah, the Arabic word for God, must be mentioned.

Muslim Fury

The suspension of the halal food supplier won plaudits in Britain.

“This is not a matter of dietary preference but of Islamic law,” Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust campaign group, said.

“There are clear hospital and prison rules that halal meat must be on the menu.

“This lapse will have offended and distressed high numbers of Muslim prisoners and their families so apologizing, suspending the supplier and investigating the incident are the right steps for the MoJ to take,” she said.

The FSA spokeswoman echoes a similar message.

“People have a right to expect that the food they are eating is correctly described,” she said.

“We have called an urgent meeting of major retailers and suppliers on Monday to ensure that everyone is fully aware of their responsibilities.

“It is the responsibility of food businesses to ensure the food they sell contains what it says on the label.

“We are considering, with relevant local authorities, whether legal action is appropriate following the investigation,” she said.

The revelations, however, offended high number of Muslim prisoners and their families.

“This is very serious because no Muslim would ever eat pork meat – anything to do with pork,” Editor of the Muslim News, Ahmed Versi, told the BBC.

“It must be very distressing for those in prison who have been given this meat to realize they may have been eating food which was contaminated with pig.”

Fake halal imports anger China’s Muslims

Uyghurs say Chinese companies are passing goods off as halal products imported from Muslim countries.

The products with foreign labels marking them Islamic-compliant are popular among Uyghurs who distrust the certification by China’s state-run Islamic body, sources in Xinjiang said.

One company contacted by RFA Uyghur Service, Tianren International Ltd., admitted it had been producing food products domestically and mislabeling them as certified halal goods from Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim country.

“Our company was set up a long time ago and has grown to a large scale. We mainly produce halal foods for the whole Xinjiang region and net hundreds of thousands to several million yuan [annually],” or hundreds of thousands of U.S. dollars, said the company’s director, surnamed Luo.

“We label our foods as a Malaysian brand and mark them halal, but most of the halal foods we send to Xinjiang are produced in our factory,” she said.

“We have a large market in Xinjiang,” she said, referring to the region’s 9 million mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uyghurs.

When asked if the company could run afoul of authorities and lose consumers in Xinjiang if it was discovered that it was falsely labeling its products, Luo responded, “It’s not a problem.”

In a follow-up call, Luo said that her company makes its food using halal ingredients, although she refused to provide details on how production was monitored.

An investigation of the address listed on a Tianren International product label for its office in Malaysia found a personal storage facility and not a food processing center.

Online forum

Tianren had been singled out on an online forum by Uyghurs as one of two companies said to be mislabeling products as coming from Muslim countries with exacting halal guidelines, when they were in fact being produced in China.

In messages on the Uyghur-language chat forum later deleted by Internet censors, the netizens said that they had been “cheated” by Tianren and an importer named Albert Lim, referring to them as “dishonest traders” that were retailing “fake halal foods.”

Officials at Albert Lim Imports could not be reached for comment, but the company’s address in Malaysia was found to be an auto garage.

Lack of trust

Sources within Xinjiang said that the number of food products that claim to be imported from abroad has increased recently and that such goods were in much higher demand than similar items known to be made in China.

They said that because China is not a Muslim country, Uyghurs distrust foods produced there, even when they are labeled as halal.

In China, halal foods, which play a significant role in Uyghur culture, are only produced in factories which have special permits from the government by the approval of the official Islamic Association.

Muslims are barred under their religion from consuming non-halal items such as pork, alcohol, blood, and the meat of animals that have not been slaughtered based on religious practices.

Non-food products, such as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, are also are subject to halal standards.

Chinese companies importing “halal foods” from Muslim countries such as Malaysia are not vetted by the Islamic Association, and Uyghur sources said they would not trust the halal standards of the association even if they did.

There has also been a tendency for Uyghurs to boycott Chinese products following the July 2009 ethnic violence between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi that left nearly 200 people dead according to official reports.

Preferred goods

Sources in Xinjiang confirmed that food items believed to be halal and imported from abroad are more popular among Uyghurs, even when the ingredients labels are only in English.

One Uyghur youth said that one of the most sought-after products are imported energy drinks, particularly among the younger generation.

When asked where the energy drinks were imported from, the youth said he believed they were from “Malaysia and other Arabic countries.”

“Of course we are going to buy the ones made in Muslim countries, even if it is expensive, because it’s more credible [as a halal product],” he said.

“We bought the Chinese-made drinks before too, but not much,” he said.

“When they began to be imported from Muslim countries we preferred to buy it more.”

But a Uyghur businessman who acts as a middleman in Urumqi for a Chinese importer of energy drinks said he was surprised to learn that domestic companies were mislabeling their products as coming from Muslim countries.

“Did they really say that?” he asked after being informed that Tianren International had admitted to producing its food items at its factory in China.

He said that he was confident the products he purchased for resale in Urumqi were legitimately from Malaysia.

“The company I have contact with in China has a branch in Malaysia. [I know] because I … talked with them,” he said.

But he admitted that if he were to purchase halal products that were produced by Chinese companies “it would be cheaper” than importing them from Muslim countries.

“Imported halal foods are more expensive than those that are not imported,” he said.

Uyghur efforts

Even Uyghurs who do not strictly adhere to Muslim halal standards are often willing to pay a premium for foreign goods rather than give their money to Chinese companies, sources said.

They said that Chinese companies are merely cashing in on the Uyghur community by labeling their products as foreign and halal in an effort to draw in a larger market share.

But Uyghurs have been barred from the same market, they said.

Members on the online forum that complained about Tianren’s fake products expressed frustration that only a handful of Uyghur companies—such as importers Arman and Ihlas which are owned by Turkish Uyghurs—had been given permission by Chinese authorities to import food products from abroad.

Aside from demanding more Muslim-led companies in the region be allowed to source goods from abroad, Uyghurs have also called for tighter controls on “halal” products that are made in China.

But the Uyghur community has very little power to exercise consumer rights in China, Charles Burton, a senior consultant on Chinese affairs to agencies of the Canadian government, said.

“A lot of this has to do with bribery of food inspectors and corruption by the companies which are selling items that are not as they are described on the packaging,” he said.

The issue is often overlooked, he said, because Han Chinese “do not respect the religious rights of the Uyghur Muslims,” which is a byproduct of the Chinese government “oppressing Uyghur religious freedoms.”

“It is terrible for Muslims to buy food which they believe is halal, but actually is not,” Burton said.

“The sad thing is that Uyghurs have very little power and lack the connections to exert influence on behalf of their group,” he said.

“There are no nongovernmental organizations to supervise this kind of issue.”

McDonald’s settles legal case over false Halal products

United States – McDonald’s and one of its franchise owners agreed to pay $700,000 to members of the Muslim community to settle allegations a Detroit-area restaurant falsely advertised its food as being prepared according to Islamic dietary law.

McDonald’s and Finley’s Management Co. agreed Friday to the tentative settlement, with that money to be shared by Dearborn Heights resident Ahmed Ahmed, a Detroit health clinic, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn and lawyers.

Ahmed’s attorney, Kassem Dakhlallah, told The Associated Press on Monday that he’s “thrilled” with the preliminary deal that’s expected to be finalized March 1. McDonald’s and Finley’s Management deny any liability but say the settlement is in their best interests.

The lawsuit alleged that Ahmed bought a chicken sandwich in September 2011 at a Dearborn McDonald’s but found it wasn’t halal _ meaning it didn’t meet Islamic requirements for preparing food. Islam forbids consumption of pork, and God’s name must be invoked before an animal providing meat for consumption is slaughtered.

Dakhlallah said there are only two McDonald’s in the United States that sell halal products and both are in Dearborn, which has one of the nation’s largest Arab and Muslim communities. Overall, the Detroit area is home to about 150,000 Muslims of many different ethnicities.

The locations advertise that they exclusively sell halal Chicken McNuggets and McChicken sandwiches and they have to get those products from an approved halal provider, Dakhlallah said. He said there was no evidence of problems on the production side, but he alleges that the Dearborn location on Ford Road sold non-halal products when it ran out of halal.

Dakhlallah said he was approached by Ahmed, and they conducted an investigation. A letter sent to McDonald’s Corp. and Finley’s Management by Dakhlallah’s firm said Ahmed had “confirmed from a source familiar with the inventory” that the restaurant had sold non-halal food “on many occasions.”

After they received no response to the letter, Dakhlallah said, they filed a lawsuit in Wayne County Circuit Court in November 2011 as part of a class action.

The Associated Press left messages Monday afternoon for attorneys representing the corporation and the franchise.

In the settlement notice, Finley’s Management said it “has a carefully designed system for preparing and serving halal such that halal chicken products are labeled, stored, refrigerated, and cooked in halal-only areas.” The company added it trains its employees on preparing halal food and “requires strict adherence to the process.”

He said although Ahmed believes McDonald’s was negligent, there was no evidence that the chain set out to deceive customers.

“McDonald’s from the very beginning stepped up and took this case very seriously,” Dakhlallah said. “They made it clear they wanted to resolve this. They got ahead of the problem.”

The lawsuit covers anyone who bought the halal-advertised products from the Ford Road restaurant and another Dearborn McDonald’s with a different owner between September 2005 and last Friday. Since that would be impossible to determine, Dakhlallah said both sides agreed to provide money to community-based charities that benefit members of this group.

The other location on Michigan Avenue wasn’t a defendant or a focus of the investigation, Dakhlallah said.

He said the final hearing will ultimately determine who gets what and how much, but roughly $275,000 is expected to go to the Huda Clinic, about $150,000 to the museum, $230,000 to attorneys and $20,000 to Ahmed.

Dakhlallah said he believes it’s the first lawsuit of its kind related to McDonald’s and halal food.

In 2002, McDonald’s agreed to donate $10 million to Hindu and other groups in the U.S. to settle lawsuits that accused the chain of mislabeling french fries and hash browns as vegetarian. The vegetable oil used to prepare the items had contained traces of beef for flavoring purposes.