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Last Updated: Jun 25th, 2007 - 17:07:26 |
Halal means different things to different people.
When Yousuf Khan first started distributing halal meat in 1987, he trusted the people who sold to him. He did not question where the meat came from or how the sellers could guarantee it was truly halal, which means permissible or lawful according to the Muslim religion.
But then Khan started investigating.
“I am a cop from back home,” the Pakistani owner of Glendale Heights-based Zabiha Halal Meat Processors Inc. said with a laugh.
He once even secretly tailed one of his meat suppliers all the way from Chicago to Detroit. He discovered a lot of fraud. He tracked some of the meat he was buying to slaughterhouses where the owners asked him, “What is halal?” So in 1989, Khan decided to start slaughtering the animals himself.
While he operated his own slaughterhouse for a time, now he works with several slaughterhouses in the Chicago area to ensure that the animals are killed and processed in compliance with halal.
Khan said he still sees problems. “Left and right, cheating is going on in that market.”
Beside some cases of obvious fraud, however, there are other instances that may be a matter of difference of opinion.
In 2001, Illinois passed the Halal Food Act, which makes it a misdemeanor to mislead someone into believing that a non-halal product is halal. Illinois was the third state in the U.S. to make such a rule.
Five years later, the specifics of the state rules are still not finalized, said Kris Mazurczak, meat and poultry inspection bureau chief for the Illinois Department of Agriculture.
“We hope to publish these rules in spring,” he said.
“The challenge of the community is they have different expectations,” Mazurczak said. “Different parts of the community do not agree on a definition of halal product.”
For example, the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America, an international halal certifier based in Park Ridge and the largest halal certifier in North America, was very active in getting the Illinois Halal Food Act passed.
But according to Kahn’s definition, a lot of meat certified by the council is not halal.
Kahn’s standard is that the animal must be hand-slaughtered by a Muslim in the name of God, the neck must be cut horizontally to ensure that all of the blood drains out and the animal must not be stunned before it is killed.
Zeshan Sadek, a halal auditor for the council, concurs that a Muslim has to be at the slaughterhouse and a blessing must be said. He also agrees that that the neck must be cut horizontally “so there is a complete drainage of blood.”
But the council will certify machine-killed animals, though “we prefer hand slaughter,” Sadek said.
And it prefers that animals are stunned. “It’s just a more humane handling of the animal,” he said.
Khan said most of the Muslim clerics he has consulted “agree that the animals should not be stunned.”
Instead, the sharpest knife should be used so the animal dies quickly with minimal pain.
Sadek acknowledged that “different groups have different views.”
And Kahn is doing his best to promote his interpretation. He and some colleagues recently founded the North American Halal Foundation, which spelled out strict rules for the labeling of halal meat.
The group has circulated disclosure forms to Chicago stores selling halal products and will publicize and promote those stores that affirm they are complying with the rules.
It’s an issue that has implications for a big and growing business. Halal food products are a $16 billion annual industry in the U.S. and $150 billion worldwide, according to Mazhar Hussaini, director of the Halal Program for the Islamic Society of North America. He said the U.S. market is growing 25 percent to 30 percent a year.
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