Do you know where the chicken in your lunchtime sandwich came from? Where it lived and how it died? For most people, the answer’s probably no, so it might have been a surprise to discover that many restaurants, supermarkets, and even schools have been selling halal meat without labelling it as such. Of course there are people who will argue for both sides of halal. I can understand why people are so against it, as Melanie McDonagh explains in her blog. After all, slitting an animal’s throat while it’s still conscious isn’t the nicest way of doing things. But I’m not sure that halal – or even kosher slaughter, which prohibits pre-stunning – is the one burning issue in meat production. In terms of this recent uproar, the initial problem was that chicken was being used in restaurant food, without people being informed that halal methods were used for the slaughter.
But these chickens haven’t exactly had a very nice life before they were killed, have they? A normal chicken would take at least 6 months to become fully grown, but with broiler chickens, their growth is often quintupled, so that they are ready for slaughter at 6 weeks of age.
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