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Halal shops help Muslims cut out mystery meat
the Georgia Straight, February 27, 2003
“If you see meat that’s not halal and it’s ten cents cheaper a pound,” Hudda says, “you need to resist. You must have patience and this will bring you closer to God.”
Eating foods which are halal-or permissible by God-is a central tenant of Islamic. For Muslims living in Canada, it’s often been a struggle to find halal products. In the past decade, the options have been steadily growing, and in October, a Muslim family in the Vancouver area opened up the first Muslim owned and operated slaughterhouse in the country.
The concept of halal is very similar to the Jewish practice of eating kosher: the animal must be killed with one quick cut to the throat and the blood is drained out. (Eating pork is also forbidden in both religions.) Muslims believe if they don’t adhere to the practice, which is described in the Koran, that they will grow distant from God.
Many Muslim Canadians used to drive long distances to buy halal products, or they obtained their meat from family farms where it was halal but wasn’t examined by federal health inspectors. In the 1980’s, several packinghouses in the Vancouver area started bringing Muslims in several days a week to kill animals according to halal traditions. However, some members of the community feared the meat might get mixed up with nonhalal products or it could come into contract with pork. In the past few years, one slaughterhouse in Surrey, operated by non-Muslims, has had a monopoly on the local halal market.
Hamid Ismail’s family, who opened Jasmine Halal Meats, Vancouver’s first halal retail shop on Main Street in 1976, dreamed that one day they would own an abattoir of their own. In October, their dream was finally realized. The family, which hails originally from Fiji, purchased Pitt Meadows Meats and converted the facility to halal. With up to 50,000 Muslims now living in the area, they figured the timing was right.
“We were after a plant for a long time,” explains 40-year-old Ismail. “We put it into our hearts and minds that we were going to open a plant and provide better quality meat to our community. The Muslim public are very happy to hear the news that we have a place where we don’t have to worry about if it is halal or if it’s not halal.”
At the back of the abattoir, Ismail’s 26-year-old cousin, Khalil Saeed, brings a year-old Holstein into a small corral. Saeed, dressed in a white butcher’s coat, knocks the animal unconscious with a stun gun and makes a fast cut to the cow’s throat with a long, sharp knife, while he repeats the words “in the name of God” in Arabic. Then the animal is hung up and the blood drained out. Muslims believe it is more hygienic to eat meat without the blood and they think the method of killing is quicker and more humane than conventional methods.
Over on Main Street in Vancouver at Jasmine Halal Meats, the current owner, Moussa Mohaidly stands behind the till. This was once the only halal shop in town, but now there are several dozen in the Lower Mainland. Mohaidly’s Muslim customers are reassured to have a new source of meat which they can be sure is halal and many of his non-Muslim customers are starting to understand what the word means.
“A lot of customers used to come to my store and think that halal was just the name of the store,” he says. “People in the neighbourhood are starting to understand more and more.”
Mohaidly says that some non-Muslims are starting to ask for halal products. Some like it because they feel it’s more humane, some think it’s more hygienic and others like the fact that the animal was killed in a way that shows respect to a higher being. Mohaidly says they may not be Muslims, but they’re spiritual people and they also believe that taking the life of an animal is something we should show thanks for.