Saturday, January 06, 2007

This Jail is Certainly Uncontaminated by Meat

Police authorities in Lancashire have removed all meat from the diet of Muslim prisoners, in order to avoid the difficult and costly process of certifying everything as halal. According to the Lancashire Telegraph:

Meat off menu for Muslim prisoners

Chicken has been pulled from the menu for Muslims in police custody over fears it had been contaminated by pork products.

Police have now taken all meat off the table for Muslims as food was being labelled as ‘produced in accordance with Muslim law’ but was not Halal.

Lancashire Police Authority bosses insisted that no Muslim had been given one of the microwave meals on the premise and the decision to scrap the meals was taken to remove any confusion.

The new system, where only vegetarian meals are offered to Muslims, was introduced towards the end of last year.

A diet of chickpeas, falafel, and rice would be punishment enough for me.

The difficulty arose out of the procurement process for the institutions’ food:

“What they noticed was that some of the food packaging said produced in accordance with Muslim law.’ It was pointed out that this was not Halal.

“It refers to some of the utensils used to put the meal together as opposed to how the meat is slaughtered.

[…]

“No Muslims were told this food was Halal, but we wanted to take away any confusion.

“We tried to get assurances from the supplier that this type of chicken was not being used, but this was not possible.”

He said that to avoid any confusion or uncertainty the constabulary introduced the new system.

[…]

Meals labelled ‘produced in accordance with Muslim law’ or similar will no longer be ordered and Muslim detainees are made aware that the faith compliance of any meals cannot be guaranteed with the exception of the vegetarian option.
- - - - - - - - - -
The Muslims in Lancashire are not happy; they think the police should be willing to go the extra mile:

But chairman of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, Hamid Qureshi, said: “Taking meat totally off the menu is not right. They should be trying to provide Halal meat.”

Notice the whiny tone. The filthy infidels should make the extra effort and expense to accommodate the needs of Muslim lawbreakers. Muslim prisoners are entitled to receive options that no other prisoner has the right to claim. Until they wake up and convert to Islam, the infidel swine must cater to the followers of the prophet according to dictates of the Koran.

[The issue] was raised after reports that imported chicken from Holland contained pork in order to retain moisture.

We had our own secular version of the same issue when peanut products crept into airline snacks and caused serious and even life-threatening problems for people with allergies to peanuts. The airlines eventually had to remove all traces of peanuts and peanut oil from their offerings, so I expect that the Lancashire Constabulary will eventually have to cave and do the same with their food.

In the modern PC world, a determined person with a grievance always holds the trump card.

But for the time being, Muslims enjoying the hospitality of the Lancashire authorities will have to choose between vegetables or haram.

Maybe they should go whole hog and actually become vegans. That would further cement their alliance with the greenie Left.


Hat tip: LN.

7 comments:

kepiblanc said...

"Maybe they should go whole hog and actually become vegans".

Or maybe stay out of jail ?

Panday said...

Or out of the UK?

Profitsbeard said...

Let them eat Korans if they're so fastidious.

Douglas V. Gibbs said...

I say claim the food's Halal, then insert pork and mad cow diseased beef, and inject a few other nasties, and then as they choke and die, let them know about the pork.

drummerboy said...

I like this idea. Take this stuff even further and make ALL muslim women in society have to wear the full hajib.

Be careful what one wishes for.

drummerboy

X said...

Can I point out that correct kosher slaughter is actually as humane as other, more modern variations? When it's carried out correctly the animal will be dead very fast, as part of the laws concerning the slaughter of animals require that they aren't left to run about and injure themselves, as this taints the meat. I don't know if it was here or elsewhere, but I remember reading someone point out that Kashrut (of which kosher is a subset) is a very strict set of regulations that spend a great deal of time on the welfare of the animal. This is old law. Kosher and Halal are about as comparable as meat and veg.

Halal doesn't qualify as kosher. The treatment of the animals is uncaring and brutal - you've undoubtedly seen the slaughter that takes place in muslim countries to "celebrate" muslim holy days on this site. Halal primarily concerns itself with whether the slaughter was carried out by a "clean" person, not the condition of the animal or the way it is killed. Kosher, as I've already pointed out, is concerned as much with the animal as anything else. A damanged animal would be "unclean".

There have been some incidents with allegedly kosher slaughter being brutal and iknhumane but these were carried out against jewish dietary law rather than in compliance with it. You shuld read up on it some time, it's quite interesting how "progressive" these laws are with regard to animal welfare, especilaly considering how old they are.

Vera said...

archonix: Halal can certainly be just as humane as kosher (the technique is very similar). I think the sacrificial animal slaughter practiced by Muslims is a lot more brutal than kosher or regular halal, simply because kosher and industrially-produced halal slaughter are performed by trained professionals, whereas the Muslim holiday animal slaughter is done by amateurs.