On the Halal Food Authority

Order order!

This was not the cry of a butcher at a halal meat stall, but the Speaker of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain agreeing to an emergency debate on the halal meat industry in Britain. It’s 1993. The parliament, formed a year earlier by the Muslim Institute, would debate, highlight and mobilise on issues impacting British Muslims. Halal meat was not a topic its founders expected to be having to spend any time on when the parliament was first envisaged. However, the concern of haram meat being passed off as halal was being raised by an increasing number of ordinary members of the Muslim Parliament – known as MMPs, of which there were 155 up and down the country. They were raising concerns that the supply and demand of halal meat simply did not match-up. Something was awry. The Speaker called for a debate on the matter.

The BBC soon heard of the parliament’s concerns and ran an undercover investigation, on the ‘scandal of the UK halal meat industry’. It was produced by Aaqil Ahmed, who a decade and half later would become BBC’s Head of Religion and Ethics. The situation was so dire that some Muslims were becoming vegetarian rather than risk eating haram meat labelled as halal.

The halal meat industry in the early 1990s was dominated by halal meat shops. In fact the foundation of the early Muslim economy in the UK was based on these separate shops providing halal meat and then selling other produce to a captured Muslim consumer base. However, the halal meat trade was entirely unregulated and based solely on the honesty of your local butcher and his suppliers. It was found that many were buying the cheapest quality meat from places like Smithfield meat market in Farringdon. They would turn up late, after all the fine meats were sold, pick up the cheap stuff which, if unsold, would go into making dog and cat food, and sell it off as halal.

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