'Not Halal Enough': Finland's Strict Slaughter Rules Roasted by Local Muslims

A new Finnish bill, whose goal is to makeanimal slaughter less painful, is on a collision course with Islam, whoseprescriptions require the animal to be mentally present when the carotid arteryand the jugular vein are severed, bleeding the animal to death.

The new animal welfare bill which is aboutto be discussed this spring will toughen the butchery laws, making it mandatoryfor the animals to be unconscious at the time of the slaughter, will in effectrevise the whole halal practice in Finland, which currently has five halalslaughterhouses, the Hufvudstadsbladet daily reported.

"The current law allows for animals tobe stunned and slaughtered at the same time. It goes without saying thatstunning and killing at the same time is quite difficult. A slaughter withoutstunning causes suffering, panic and fear in animals," Heidi Kivek?s, theCEO of Animalia, a Finnish NGO promoting animal rights, told Hufvudstadsbladet.

This push for a more "humane"killing has nevertheless irked local Muslims, who claim it goes against theirreligious prescriptions dating back to Prophet Muhammad's teachings.

"If you first stun the animal and thencut the throat, it is no longer halal meat according to Islam," shopmanager Emin G?rm?? of the Alanya Market, which has shops across Finland andcaters to a wide range of mostly immigrant customers, who would like to keeptheir traditions intact.

To please its fastidious clientele, AlanyaMarket, which, by its own admission, sells about 160 lambs and four calves aweek, has recently resorted to importing meat from Latvia and the UK. ButcherAlan Awla stressed the fact that Finnish slaughtering methods already failed tomeet halal requirements.

The Helsinki-based Sabir charcuterie, whichsells about 15 tons of halal meat per month, also switched to Latvia as itsmain provider. Its owner, Hadi Sabir, claimed that the output of Finnishabattoirs was insufficient, which forced him to solely rely on imports.

Nor did Finland's Islamic Association holdFinnish halal practices in high esteem.

"The majority of Finnish Muslims Iknow are of the opinion that Finnish methods of slaughter are not compatiblewith Islamic law," former president of the society Abdi Hakim Yasin toldHufvudstadsbladet.

In January 2018, an illegal halalslaughterhouse was discovered in Kauhajoki, Southern Ostrobothnia, the Ilkkanewspaper reported.

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At present, the differences between EUcountries' approach to halal slaughter remain due to Brussels transferring thedecision-making to individual member states.

"This contributes to greatly varyingpractices in European slaughterhouses. One way of addressing the problem wouldbe to make more stringent requirements for the labeling of meat products,"Kivek?s argued.

Sanna Varjus of the Finnish Food SafetyAuthority (Evira) argued that until the EU has introduced any universallegislature, it is fully permitted with imported halal meat.

Finland, a nation of 5.5 million, isestimated to have a Muslim community of 60,000.

Link-> https://sputniknews.com/europe/201802081061468171-finland-humane-slaughter-halal-islam/