Are there Four Million Muslims in the UK? According to the Retail Sector, Yes.

Successful retailers are canny about customer preferences and purchasing power, and no specialist trade publication in the retail sector would last for long if it published information which did not assist its readership in increasing turnover and profits. The information contained in a lengthy feature entitled ‘Halal here we come’ which was published last month by the Online Meat Trades Journal is therefore of interest to more than the meat sector, insofar as its analysis of the Muslim market in the UK reveals some surprising statistics.

As the Mail on Sunday revealed last Sunday, millions of non-Muslim Britons are being sold halal-slaughtered meat and poultry without this fact being advertised, and Muslim consumer habits reveal why this is the case. According to the Online Meat Trades Journal the halal meat market in the UK is worth up to £2 billion per annum, but it laments that ‘most [of this] meat is imported and sold via ethnic retailers.’ It therefore sees considerable scope for the domestic industry to up its share of the halal sector and thereby increase its turnover and profits as outlined in the following revealing paragraph:

The huge halal meat sector may be on the verge of further development. Up to four million Muslims, representing 3% of the UK population consume an estimated 27% of lamb and 40% of poultry produced (according to supplier Janan Meat). Given this and the fact that the European halal food market is worth approximately 15bn (£12.5bn) serving over 50m Muslims a population estimated to have grown by more than 140% in the last decade (according to Halal Industries Group) it is little wonder that mainstream retailers and wholesalers want to tap into halal.

Note the reference to “up to four million Muslims” in the UK. The 2001 census suggested that there were 1.6 million Muslims in the UK, whilst in January 2009 the Times published figures which illustrated that the resident Muslim population was growing ten times faster than any other sector of society, and had by the end of 2008 risen to circa 2.4 million. Clearly, we are witnessing a terrifyingly fast growth of this population, and the more of them that are here the stronger will be their lobbying for the free ingress of their co-religionists from overseas.

The article is also candid about the spectacularly rapid growth of the Muslim population across Europe. Demographic Islamisation is happening and it is translating directly into enforced cultural and political Islamisation as well as modified business practices. Given the figures relating to the percentages of poultry and lamb purchased by Muslims in the UK, why would large producers and abattoirs opt to have a non-halal supply chain when maintaining separate feeds adds to costs and halal slaughter remains (for some illogical reason) legal, particularly when it is the halal sector that is growing the fastest? This not only has to be stopped, but to be reversed: halal slaughter in the UK must be banned, as must be the importation of all animal products derived from this practice.

The non-Muslim apologists for halal slaughter often avoid confronting the matter by claiming that slaughtering animals is painful anyway. However, this assertion is a non-starter, for as a degree of suffering is unavoidable in animal slaughter, why make this suffering worse by slitting the creature’s throat and bleeding it to death rather than stunning? This leads on to the second of the rationalisations used by the apologists: in the UK halal slaughter involves pre-stunning. Although this proviso does exist, many Muslims do not accept that pre-stunned animals truly are halal and thus insist that stunning is not employed. Bizarrely, our law allows for halal slaughter without pre-stunning. The confusion surrounding this issue is illustrated by the comments of Rizvan Khalid (an executive director of a halal processor) on the Food Standard Agency’s (FSA) guidelines on halal slaughter in his interview with the Online Meat Trades Journal:

"I don't see how the FSA can enforce the guidelines, because although good, they are only guidelines."

The issue of whether to stun or not makes it difficult to implement one set of guidelines, he says. "Having studied the stunning issue from a scientific and a religious point of view, I can see the benefits of both." The 'default' practice at Euro Quality Lambs, where an average 15,000 animals a week are processed, is to stun. But for some customers animals are not stunned. "Some consumers only accept non-stun, but some will accept stunning as long as it does not kill the animal," he says. "But the determining factor is not the stunning itself, but how you handle and restrain the animal for stunning or for immediate slaughter." With such diverse and different requirements from customers and consumers, it is difficult to come up with one set of guidelines, he believes.

This illustrates why you should not purchase any meat or poultry labelled as halal. Sadly, some of our major supermarkets are greedily adapting their practices to the growing halal market and thus both Tesco and Asda have been making special efforts to introduce halal ranges.

The fact is that the option of choosing whether or not you eat halal meat is quickly disappearing as Islam’s demographic ascendancy forces its doctrinaire demands upon the rest of us whilst our politicians refuse to recognise let alone tackle the issue. If when you are eating out and no guarantee can be given that your meal does not contain halal-slaughtered produce I would recommend that you either opt for whichever pork-based option is available, stick to game or the vegetarian option. When buying fresh meat, purchase from a reputable local butcher and not a supermarket.