What makes halal food

Another passage reads, "And eat of what Allah has provided for you [which is] lawful and good. And fear Allah, in whom you are believers. There are some similarities between halal and kosher foods, but they are not the same. Both the Qur'an and the Old Testament forbid the consumption of pork and blood of animals, but people who are kosher cannot consume dairy and meat together, and that is not the case for halal.

Generally speaking, people who are halal can eat kosher foods , but not necessarily vice versa, according to Muslim Musings. They have also both been controversial. Halal and kosher meats were banned in Denmark over concerns about animal rights, and whether slaughtering livestock in these ways could be considered humane.

A petition launched by certification and monitoring group Danish Halal called the move an interference on religious freedom, while an Israeli minister said it was anti-Semitic. This is not the case, as noted above.

News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Traditional halal meat is killed by hand and must be blessed by the slaughterman. Islam has strict laws on the proper method of slaughtering an animal. One, called dhabihah, requires a swift, deep incision with a sharp knife on the neck that cuts the jugular vein. For meat to be considered halal the animal must be alive and healthy before it is killed, and all the blood must be drained from the body. For the majority, no. Between 84 and 90 per cent of animals killed for halal meat in the UK are processed by one of the large number of halal slaughterhouses which do use electric stunning beforehand.

This does, however, leave a significant minority of animals which are killed without being stunned first, at one of a reported 12 slaughterhouses in the UK which still perform the more traditional practice, endorsed by Islamic scholars, of keeping the animal conscious when its throat is cut. Q Do halal slaughterhouses in the UK face different regulations to non-halal ones?

No, with the single exception of whether or not stunning is used. For halal slaughter that includes pre-stunning there is no practical difference in the way the animal is treated. According to the Muslims in Dietetics and Nutrition, a member group of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Halal food can never contain pork or pork products that includes gelatin and shortenings , or any alcohol.

Animals must be fed vegetarian diets, which means that many chickens and cows raised on U. Halal animals must be slaughtered by a Muslim, who says a blessing, and by hand, not by machine which is the way many chickens in the U. Only wild-caught fish are Halal certified by MCG standards. The U. Department of Agriculture, which serves as the reference for nutritional content of food, does not separate out Halal meat or kosher meat, for that matter from other meats for its nutritional information.

Correction : The original version of this article misstated when the ban was enacted.