United Kingdom
Related: About this forum'Traces of pork DNA' found in Halal prison meat
The Ministry of Justice is to suspend a firm supplying meat to prisons after tests found that it may have provided pies and pasties described as Halal - but with traces of pork DNA.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said the "local authority" involved was investigating, while the MoJ said the products have been withdrawn.
Justice minister Jeremy Wright said the incident was "absolutely unacceptable".
Under Islamic law, Muslims are strictly forbidden to eat pork.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21302925
Pork dna had already been mentioned in the beef burger issue which is obviously separate from this but of equal concern to anyone either Muslim or Jewish.
ZombieHorde
(29,047 posts)Lots of people who identify as Jewish eat pork. Perhaps not Orthodox Jews, but lots of Reformed Jews do eat pork. I don't have any friends who identify as Muslim, so I don't know their actual eating habits.
T_i_B
(14,744 posts)Kosher & Halal also have similar rules regarding the slaughter of animals, although Kosher is stricter & more wide ranging then Halal.
Pig meat is considered unclean in both Judaism & Islam.
One thing I will say is that Muslims take much greater care in terms of sourcing meat from a good butcher then the rest of us do.
ZombieHorde
(29,047 posts)Similarly, some Catholics have gay sex and/or use condoms.
louis-t
(23,296 posts)I'd bet the farm on it. Middle Eastern cuisine often involves raw lamb. The meat grinders have to be meticulously cleaned and often the butchers have a seperate one just for raw.
Response to dipsydoodle (Original post)
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fedsron2us
(2,863 posts)These contaminated food scandals mysteriously always seem to occur on their watch.
Last time they almost wiped out a lot of British farmers because of their mishandling of the BSE crisis
As usual the UK FSA is busily slamming all the stable door after all the horse and pork meat has found its way into products that are not supposed to contain either of them. One suspects they would have done nothing if it had not been for their Irish counterpart alerting them to the issue.
Of course, halal products are not only not supposed to not contain pork they are also supposed to have been certificated as being slaughtered according to halal rules which one assumes not be done at an abbatoir used to process pigs and then turned into products according that meet Islamic dietary rules This suggests the contamination may be due to fraud rather than just oversight as pork would be a cheap way of bulking out a more expensive meat product.
The MoJ apparently have suspended the supplier but not named them. One wonders if ABP subsidiaries are involved here as well as in the horse meat scandal.