Dutch Ban on Ritual Slaughter

[tonybloke]

our local butcher has a map on his wall, showing where the farms are which provide all of his meat.

 

[Storm™]

The obvious answer is go to your local independent butcher who will be able to tell you all about the meat up to and including (in many cases) the farm it came from.

Ours is cheaper, you can indeed speak to any of the butchers about any aspect of the meat. All very helpful. Farms for each meat listed on labels. And they use a local abattoir. Some of my mates work there so know how it's achieved. I haven't bought meat from a supermarket for two years now.

We had a trial to see if we could supply one hot main meal a day for two, for £5.00. So this was meat veg and a pudding. In town I could achieve this for £3.90. By the end of the month I would usually be in credit by on average £25.00. Due to car being off the road for a number of months and partner passing Tesco each day the same was tried there. Same meals, same ingredients, same weight of meat etc. Could not manage to get it under £6.70 a day. The meat was tatty, the veg was boiled to death and still aldente. We bought some sausage and cooked them for the normal time we would cook the butchers. They were still pink and raw. After two (I know but honestly) two hours we gave up. Threw them away and just had the veg. Could not believe it. And the veg just will not cook. All fresh food bought locally now. One thing is our butchers don't supply free range organic chicken. Just free range. And its roughly the same price as steak. Duck is cheaper. I mean I just couldn't believe it till we tried.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Is this absolutely certain?
I find it hard to believe that a muslim would buy meat that was not labelled halal. So what is the benefit to the supermarket?

Supermarkets get only the meat rejected by or superfluous to the halal and kosher outlets which DO label their meat.
For instance .....I was taught in my meat inspection lessons, a lifetime ago, that blood vessels have to be pulled out of kosher meat and this is difficult to do with hind quarter meat so the supermarkets get this "rejected" meat. Things may have changed.

Our local butcher has tag numbers of his meat displayed and they are all either from his farm or like minded local ones.

 

[drstitson]

"Is this absolutely certain?
I find it hard to believe that a muslim would buy meat that was not labelled halal. So what is the benefit to the supermarket?"

NZ don't miss a trick commercially:

manuka honey - a 2nd rate harvest found a new niche through clever marketing

halal meat - recognise the importance of emerging muslim markets so ensure that all meat destined for export is Halal.

UK muslims (those that set foot in big supermarkets) know that. It's just everyone else (who also don't care about meat quality/provenance anyway) are kept in the dark.

 

[greatbritishhoney]

I have to admit at first that I thought this all sounded like one of those media stories blown out of proportion but I've just done a bit of searching around and it seems that this practice (i.e - supermarkets not labelling halal meat as such) has been going on for at least a decade. I find this really worrying. I very rarely buy supermarket meat but will be making sure everything comes from my butcher in future.

Oh, and several of the articles I read said that it is not just the Big 4, but also supermarkets that many would consider to be more ethical (Co-op, Waitrose).