Restaurants and halal
Robert Stannard
Date posted: 1 Mar 2019
Dear Sir/Madam
I recently became aware that a number of
my local restaurants are serving halal meat
but not advertising it. I became aware of this
quite by accident. One day my favourite dish
on the menu of Banana Tree (a SE Asian restaurant) was gone – when I queried this with
the waitress she said it was because it contained pork and the kitchen staff didn’t want
to touch it. I then asked whether the meat
being served in the other dishes was halal
and she said: ‘Yes, it is’. I then asked why,
if it was halal meat, wasn’t there any sign to
make that clear, and the reply was: ‘There is
no legal requirement to mention the method
of slaughter of meat – if a customer asks then
we must tell them’. I’ve raised this with my
local councillors and my local MP and both
were surprised by this. They checked it with
my
local food standards agency and they
have confirmed that what the waitress said
is correct. It seems that, in order to make it
mandatory to display the method of slaughter, the law would need to be changed.