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Last Updated: Jun 25th, 2007 - 17:07:26 |
KUALA LUMPUR, April 13 (Bernama) -- The National Fatwa (Edicts) Council has ruled as allowable the slaughter of animals using the "thoracic sticking" procedure and has declared meat from animals so slaughtered in New Zealand as "halal" (permissible in Islam).
Veterinary Services Department (JPH) Director General Datuk Dr Abdul Aziz Jamaluddin said the decision was reached at a meeting of the council on Sept 29 last year.
Thoracic sticking is a procedure that involves severing the major blood vessels around the heart with a knife to drain the blood.
"An auditing carried out by JPH and the Islamic Development Department (Jakim) on abattoirs in New Zealand between May 7 and 30 last year found several procedures which did not meet the Halal Malaysia MS 1500:2004 standard," he said in a statement issued here, Friday.
The procedures include electrical immobilisation and spinal discharge, which use electric current to reduce the struggle of the animal during the slaughter and reduce the incidence of injury suffered by the animal handlers.
Abdul Aziz said thoracic sticking was allowed because the procedure complied with conditions like proper slaughter of the animals and was conducted after proper blood discharge and was supervised by authorised Muslim personnel.
"However, the number of abattoirs allowed to export beef to Malaysia is maintained due to the electrical immobilisation and spinal discharge procedures still practised in New Zealand," he added.
The number of abattoirs approved to export beef and mutton has been reduced to only 13.
He said the audit on cattle and sheep abbatoirs in New Zealand would be carried out from April 19 to 28 by officers from JPH and Jakim who will check to ensure that the procedures were carried out after proper slaughter of the animals, in accordance with the Malaysian halal standard where only head electrical stunning was allowed.
Malaysia's import of beef from New Zealand between 2000 and 2005 comprised five to eight per cent of the total beef import while the import of mutton from New Zealand made up 34 to 50 per cent of the total import.
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