"Islamic Burgers" In France
 

Interesting development including the "controversy' amongst politicians that has supposedly ensued.

Here's the link

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?nav=hcmodule

It is interesting that there is even a controversy about this. Restaurants cater to their customers and if something will increase business, why not? France already has its kosher restaurants, important to some Jews, vegetarian restaurants important to some Hindus as well as others, etc. Why not halal as well? The meat tastes the same.

This is kind of old news already, especially since KFC in France has been hallal for years. The article is full of inaccuracies, because Quick is not a "home-grown" chain -- it is Belgian in origin even though it is now French owned. In fact, it is still #1 in Belgium ahead of McDonald's.

More interesting is that it has stopped salting its french fries for health reasons. (Yes, little packets of salt are available for people who don't care about their health.)

And since news seems to be slow crossing the ocean, I guess I should tell you that McDonald's in France now has locations that do not sell any hamburgers. The McCafé chain is trying to stomp out Starbucks and only sells salads and pastry besides its gourmet(?)Segafredo coffee drinks. I suppose I should also mention that its pastry items are provided by the dubious French fast food chain "Paul."

McCafé started as a section of normal McDonald's places all over Europe, but now it feels confident enough to open independent places without burgers and fries, at least in France.

I wouldn't start digging, you might be surprised at the results

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...lar-meals.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...d-Khawaja.html

" Why not halal as well? The meat tastes the same."

Possibly. But the animal's slaughtered in a way most people who've thought about it consider inhumane.

If it's part of a Jew's or Muslim's religion to inflict needless suffering on an animal - fine. But he doesn't have the right to deprive me of my right to insist I eat only animals that have been slaughtered in a civilised way.

If McD in Britain or Quick in France (or some British local authority school lunch programmes) discriminate in favour of inhumane killing, by removing humanely killed meat from their menus, the rest of us have every right to protest. And that's what they've done.

In fact, the issue doesn't really arise with kosher meat: only Jewish speciality restaurants restrict their meat to kosher. But halal is being introduced surreptitiously into food eaten by all - and is replacing humane meat.

Which is a seriously stupid way of handling race relations, and gives the bigots yet another real grievance.

Actually, when the subject first came up in France, there was an article that revealed that we all eat halal meat, because the halal butchers do not use major parts (40%) of the animals that are slaughtered. They are sold to the 'normal' meat processing companies and end up in our sausages, ground beef, bolognese sauce or whatever.

On a different note, it was discovered that the giant meat items on the doner kebab spits that you see everywhere are all imported from Turkish companies in Germany, guaranteed halal. And more than 30% of them contain pork.

Kerouac: one reason I posted this was in hopes you would see it and comment on the possible inaccuracies especially since you live in Paris.

Flanner, I also appreciate your thoughts on this; I was not aware of the methodology of the slaughter, etc.

Thanks to you both.

At the same time, I fully understand why Quick did what it has done, and even an anti-Islamic franchisee would have quickly changed to halal after studying it commercially.

First they made statistics on --
1) where were the fishburger sales extremely high?
2) where were the baconburger sales abnormally low?
3) where was there a big drop in sales during Ramadan?

When all three statistics coincided, they went halal, and sales went up more than 100%. Bacon was replaced by turkey bacon. And most locations have the standard items available microwaved (since halal rules would require 2 different kitchens if the items were cooked fresh).

I don't think that there are many business owners in the fast food industry who would absolutely refuse to increase their revenue by more than 100%. It was also pointed out that some of the franchised owners of the halal Quick places are Jewish.

"The decision to serve halal burgers, with its bow to Muslim buying power, has produced an outcry among some political leaders, who regard it as an affront to France's Christian traditions and official secularism".

When God created the Universe he intended that <i>le hamburger</i> be made from whatever leavings could be swept up from the shop's floor.

It is definitely an affront to France to make <i>le hamburger</i> from Kosher or Halal meat.

Vive le hamburger! Vive les frites francaise!

((I))

From AR's second link,

"The butchery method ordered by Islamic law has been condemned as "barbarically cruel" by animal welfare organisations".

Shows how much (or little) they know.

Anyone who thinks that slinging a cow up by its tail prior to zapping it is humane hasn't been to a slaughterhouse.

The Kosher procedures of slaughter have been studied and refined over 2000 years. For how long have these "activists" been in the butcher business?

((I))

A TV programme in the UK took a member of the public who was concerned about this to a halal slaughterhouse, and whatever they showed him seemed to satisfy him that it wasn't particularly cruel. On the other hand, we've had scenes of appalling cruelty in supposedly humane standard slaughterhouses over the newspaper (not, I think, the Mail or Mail on Sunday).

I don't think most people - or even most of the people who responded to the fuss about this - are that seriously bothered to check up on everything that happens in their food chain - <i>every</i> chicken, egg or bacon sandwich they buy? - they'd be no less horrified. I do suspect - especially given where this story started in the UK and the kind of comment from France quoted above - yet another attempt at "othering" Muslims by hook or by crook.

The line between halal and 'humane' butchery methods are also starting to blur, in that some imams have now 'approved' the stunning of animals before they are bled, in much the same way that animals are stunned before slaughter in typical western abattoirs.

As Patrick says, this article is looking to create a controversy where there is little (I was going to say none but that wouldn't be completely true).

Halal meat has unsurprisingly been available in France ever since the first muslims arrived, it's just taken this long for some enterprising person to see it as a marketing opportunity. Honestly, I wish I'd thought of it myself.

Here's a link which discusses some of the aspects of the slaughter process:

http://www.animalhandling.org/ht/a/G...tAction/i/7786

One plus for halal meat, at least in the US, is that it tends to originate from small farms, As a result, halal meat in the US has MUCH less of a chance of containing chemicals or hormones favored by large agri-business concerns.

Therefore, given a simple choice between a halal or non-halal burger, I'll place my chips on the halal burger...