Dhimmitude on the sly. Eurabia Update: "Top supermarkets secretly sell halal: Sainsbury's, Tesco, Waitrose, and M&S don't tell us meat is ritually slaughtered," by Abul Taher in the Daily Mail, September 25 (thanks to Stefcho):
Britain's biggest supermarket chains are selling halal lamb and chicken without telling unsuspecting shoppers.Those stocking meat slaughtered according to Islamic law include Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, Tesco, Somerfield and the Co-op.
And a Mail on Sunday investigation has found that fast-food chains including Domino's Pizza, Pizza Hut, KFC, Nando's and Subway are also using halal meat without telling customers.
But the UK's second-biggest supermarket, Asda, has refused to confirm or deny whether it sells halal meat.
The Mail on Sunday contacted Asda on Tuesday, but by yesterday it had failed to answer any of our questions.
Initially, Waitrose, Sainsbury's and Tesco were reluctant to admit they sold halal meat. But later they confessed to selling Islamically slaughtered lamb. Tesco also admitted selling some halal chicken without labelling it as such.
Most lamb imported from New Zealand by British supermarkets has been slaughtered according to Muslim law, but this is not mentioned on packaging. Some lamb from British abattoirs is also halal.
Last night, Agriculture Minister Jim Paice said: 'People should know what they're buying in the shops or when they're eating out and I will be discussing with the food industry the role labelling can play in giving consumers a choice.'
The supermarkets and fast-food outlets said they did not feel the need to tell customers that meat is halal because the slaughter conformed to Western standards, with animals stunned before being killed.
But the RSPCA has raised concerns about the way chicken is killed in Islamic abattoirs because the birds are stunned with a weaker electric current, which does not guarantee unconsciousness during slaughter.
Our enquiries have found that Subway uses some Islamically slaughtered chicken that has not been stunned.
Non-Muslim religious leaders say that Christians, Hindus or Sikhs may find it offensive to eat meat slaughtered according to Islamic ritual. Jews are unlikely to be exposed to such meat because they eat kosher, or animals slaughtered according to Jewish law.
Last week The Mail on Sunday revealed how halal food was being served to unsuspecting people in hospitals, schools and pubs across the UK....
Inayat Bunglawala, the chair of Muslims4UK, said: 'Supermarkets should not be afraid of labelling their products as halal. Halal meat tastes just the same as non-halal meat.'
But Mike Judge, from the campaign group the Christian Institute, said: 'The idea of having Islamic ritual said over meat would be objectionable to some Christians. I would find it objectionable, so it should be labelled as halal.'...
The Muslim slaughterman murmurs the Islamic verse as thousands of chickens whir towards him on a conveyor belt hung from the ceiling.
Masood Akhtar grabs hold of one chicken's head with his left hand and, with his right, draws his knife across its neck.
The slaughterman barely has time to say 'Bismillah Allah-hu-Akbar' (meaning 'In the name of Allah, who is the greatest') before the next bird is upon him.
It appears a long way from the ritualised slaughter that many would imagine produces halal chicken. Mr Akhtar is not dressed in robes but in a hair-net and a yellow blood-spattered jacket.
And far from a spiritual ceremony, the process is clinical and robotic - Mr Akhtar claims to kill 45 birds every minute and 40,000 in a week.
The procedure appears to follow Sharia law, which states that the bird must be killed alive by a Muslim man who recites the set verse as he cuts its throat....
Mr Akhtar, 29, became a slaughterman at the age of 18 after a few months' training.
'When I arrived I wanted to be a killer,' he recalled. 'On my first day in training, three out of ten birds I killed were not cut properly through both neck arteries - this meant they were not halal.
'But after three months of practice I was perfect - every bird was killed in true halal style.'
The Paul Flatman plant opened in 1961 slaughtering chickens in the normal way, but in 1977, as demand from halal wholesalers increased, Mr Flatman switched his entire production to halal.
He says he has never found it hard to recruit Muslim slaughtermen. 'It's usually just through word of mouth in the Muslim community - it's not hard to find volunteers.'...
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MISSING IN ACTION (MIA) REPORT:
Where is PETA in all of this? Animal slaughtering is not a pretty sight even in the best of circumstances. It takes little imagination to comprehend the level of cruelty introduced to this enterprise when Islamic mumbo-jumbo is added to the mixture. Cruelty to the dignity of others is stock-in-trade with respect to Islam, regardless of whether the other is human or animal.
I suppose PETA is to be found in the same large hole in the sand where the feminists have stuck their collective heads.