Risks and Rewards: the Halal Market

With demand for Halal products growing on a global basis, the market is potentially lucrative for food processors. Alex Hawkes examines why so much hesitation therefore still surrounds this sector.

According to the Islam faith, Muslims are commanded by Allah in the Qur’an to eat only pure, wholesome and permissible food that is fit for human consumption. By labelling a food product Halal, which translated literally means permissible, a commitment has been made to adhere to such dietary laws.

Although many are quite basic in their nature, for instance pork, alcohol and blood are forbidden; others follow stringent religious procedures, for example an animal must be slaughtered using a certain technique and in the name of Allah.

Countries such as Indonesia, Singapore and in particular Malaysia are well positioned to capitalise on the potentially lucrative Halal market with government bodies helping to promote the industry through defined guidelines.

However, as of yet no standardised global Halal guidelines have emerged from the sector and areas of uncertainty remain. No more so, than for food processors based outside of the traditional Halal food-producing territories, where food products are certified only by small Islamic societies or non-governmental organisations.

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Update: Cargill / Better Beef, May 2009

June 29, 2009

In May of 2009, a group of independent Halal advocates visited the Cargill / Better Beef plant in Canada. Shaykh Abdullah Nana of California, Shaykh Hussain Kamani of Chicago, and Adnan Faiz of Chicago met with the national supplier’s management and operations personnel. The Cargill / Better Beef team was extremely cooperative throughout the course of the plant visit. This level of transparency and professionalism reflected positively on Cargill / Better Beef’s willingness to work with a large base of Halal advocates in addressing any issues being expressed from the consumer’s end.

The management staff took the group of independent Halal advocates on a tour of their large beef slaughtering facility. Nearly fifteen hundred cattle are slaughtered at this facility each day by Muslim slaughter men who recite the name of Allah (tasmiyya) at every slaughter.

Update: Midamar Corporation, Jan 2009

Press Release May 28, 2009

Two independent halal advocates, Abdullah Nana of California and Saad Baig of Chicago, visited the Midamar Corporation in Iowa from January 22-Jan.29, 2009. During this trip, the halal advocates visited four slaughtering facilities in the Midwest as well as a processing plant. They also met with the Islamic Services of America (I.S.A) who certifies the Midamar products and oversees the slaughter process. The employees at both Midamar and I.S.A. were extremely cooperative and helpful. Midamar and I.S.A implemented the suggestions made by both halal advocates and provided them with detailed information needed to evaluate the halal process at Midamar.

After months of detailed research and coordination with the Midamar and I.S.A staff, the two halal advocates have prepared a list of approved Midamar meat products. At the same time, they are still doing research regarding the other meat products and they plan to visit more Midamar plants in the future. Midamar currently employs the mechanical slaughter method for some of its chicken and turkey products. The company has informed the advocates that they plan to start implementing the hand-slaughter method for these products in the near future.  The Muslim community will be updated of any new developments.

Machine-slaughtered Meat | Halal Monitoring Committee

Slaughtering animals mechanically is becoming a widespread phenomenon in many abattoirs, plants and firms in a number of countries. The idea and objective behind slaughtering animals mechanically rather than manually is to speed up the process of slaughter, thus catering for a mass production. There are many methods of slaughtering chickens mechanically. In some major plants, one machine takes care of all the stages of slaughter and production, in that the chickens enter the machine from side alive and exit from the other with all the stages of slaughtering, removing of the feathers, cleaning, cutting into pieces, packaging, etc being taken care of by this colossal electrical appliance. Normally, chickens are transported to the place of slaughter through a conveyer belt on which the chickens are hanged upside down with its legs tied to the hooks on the conveyer. These chickens after passing through extremely cold water arrive at the place where a gyratory blade or knife cuts the chickens. Thereafter, the chickens move along to the other stages of cleaning, cutting, packaging, etc.

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A Halal Meat Business Thrives in New York By Burton Bollag | America.gov

Taken over by founder’s son, the shop now has more non-Muslim customers

In the days before major Islamic holidays, there is an unusual sight in Ozone Park, an outlying corner of New York. A long line of people wait beside a pen holding several hundred goats and lambs between low buildings.

One after another, customers choose an animal, which is weighed and then slaughtered according to Islamic dietary law: A butcher utters a few words in praise of Allah before cutting the animal’s throat.

This is Madani Halal, a thriving family business founded in 1996 by an immigrant from Bangladesh and taken over in 2003 by his American-born son. In part due to continuing growth in the immigrant population in the United States, the business is expanding and is about to begin a wholesale poultry operation after a $2 million investment.

Riaz Uddin, 73, has been in America since he arrived in Boston in 1956. He worked as a dishwasher and then a cook in a kosher restaurant. He married a Catholic woman from Puerto Rico and opened two bars in New York. It was a classic American success story, but he wasn’t happy.

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Muslims find more halal restaurants and food providers By Omar Sacirbey | Boston.com

Chicken tandoori, shami kebab, and lamb korma are among the exotic dishes offered at Grain and Salt, a new South Asian eatery in Allston. But Salim Nguyen, an observant Muslim from Wayland who eats only halal, the Islamic equivalent of kosher, is drawn to Grain and Salt’s American fare.

“I can get Indo-Pakistani food at home,” says Nguyen, 36, who grew up in Natick on the Indian cooking of his mother. Today he enjoys the Pakistani cuisine his wife prepares. But he’s seldom been able to indulge in the foods his non-Muslim friends ate, like burgers, burritos, and chicken tenders because the meat wasn’t zabihah — slaughtered according to Islamic rites — and thus wasn’t halal. “Grain and Salt enabled me to eat Buffalo wings, which I always craved for but I couldn’t have.”

Halal restaurants and groceries catering to devout Muslims are proliferating across America, and Boston is no exception. On zabihah.com, sort of a Muslim Zagat’s, where diners can rate halal restaurants, there are more than 19,000 reviews for more than 5,000 restaurants and grocers, including 72 in and around Boston. But zabihah meat is no longer just for curries and kebabs or other dishes common in the Islamic world. As more Muslims are born in or come to the United States at an early age and experience what other American palates experience, zabihah meat is landing in everything from tacos and teriyaki to Philly cheese-steaks and chicken chow mein.

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The Growing Halal and Kosher Markets By Kristen Wolfe Bieler

ANYONE REMOTELY FAMILIAR WITH THE KOSHER DIET—the largest sacred food category in the country—would do a double-take at the pastrami pizza or chicken parmesan sold at Pomegranate, a kosher food megastore in Brooklyn, N.Y. Thanks to a non-dairy cheese, however, the 25,000-square-foot gourmet grocer is able to keep these dishes within the dietary guideline of never mixing dairy with meat. The pizza is just the beginning when it comes to modern-day kosher offerings, and an indicator of what is happening within the world of all sacred foods, says Mayer Gold, Pomegranate’s general manager: “The kosher consumer today wants to eat all the foods that are out there, but still requires them to be kosher.”