a religious issue.

hello muslims. i was once a freezing worker and was quite fascinated at the process we had to go through to slaughter and bone beef that was sent specifically for your religion.
i'm not to sure why, but the people who were involved in slaughtering the beef had to be people from your country and they had to also face in the direction of mecca when they slaughtered the cows. can anyone please explain this and does it really make a difference?

Originally posted by Kaboooomba
hello muslims....people from your country

Is there some nation of Islamia I'm unfamiliar with?

Originally posted by royalchicken
Is there some nation of Islamia I'm unfamiliar with?

oh... i don't know. Muslim or whatever. it is true that their people would come over and get the jobs where they had to cut the cows throats while facing mecca. you'ld have halah meat that got exported to them. it's quite a dangerous job that they do, well you have to be onto it and fast.

Originally posted by Kaboooomba
oh... i don't know. Muslim or whatever. it is true that their people would come over and get the jobs where they had to cut the cows throats while facing mecca. you'ld have halah meat that got exported to them. it's quite a dangerous job that they do, well you have to be onto it and fast.

You could kill the Cow and face Mecca in any of the 360 degrees

Originally posted by RBHILL
You could kill the Cow and face Mecca in any of the 360 degrees

Good point!

Originally posted by Kaboooomba
hello muslims. i was once a freezing worker and was quite fascinated at the process we had to go through to slaughter and bone beef that was sent specifically for your religion.
i'm not to sure why, but the people who were involved in slaughtering the beef had to be people from your country and they had to ...[text shortened]... they slaughtered the cows. can anyone please explain this and does it really make a difference?

Muslims are very simmilar to jews in this respect. The Quran has a fairly strict list of 'laws' laid down just as the old testament does, and these have been further interpreted. I believe that most Christians do not follow the laws of the Old testament as they believe that Jesus made a new Covenant with new laws. Most Christians accept the Ten Commandments and not much else from the Old Testament. There was a thread on this but no Christians really gave much response as to which exact laws should be obeyed.
All these laws had a reason, but many were taken to such extremes that they became rediculus. For example a Jew can move a chair on the Sabbath if it has two rungs in the back but not if it has three, because if it has three it is a ladder and thus moving it is work. Similarly draging it rather than lifting it is ploughing and thus work. So although God said 'do not work on the Sabbath, how you interpret that and how strict you choose to be is questionable.
However if you are Christian you should not critizise the muslims on this point as the Christian God at one time expected no less from his people at one time including the death penaly for many apparently trivial offences.

As for hallal most muslims take it very seriously with very strict rules about what types of meat you can eat, how the animals are killed, etc. It can be taken to extremes, for example if a pot or eating utensil has been used to cook non-hallal meat then it should never again be used by a muslim.

As far as I know there are two main reasons for hallal. One has to do with hygene, where some types of meat like pork were a much higher risk in terms of health than other meats at the time the quoran was written. The other has to do with respect for Gods creatures and ensuring that they are killed according to Gods law and with a prayer for them as well.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Muslims are very simmilar to jews in this respect. The Quran has a fairly strict list of 'laws' laid down just as the old testament does, and these have been further interpreted. I believe that most Christians do not follow the laws of the Old testament as they believe that Jesus made a new Covenant with new laws. Most Christians accept the Ten Commandmen ...[text shortened]... s and ensuring that they are killed according to Gods law and with a prayer for them as well.

wouldn't it be great being a jewish kid. you could get some three-rung chairs and cover mum and dad's doorway. party on!

i was working on the scales for a time while processing the hallal/non-hallal meat and a few times i forgot to change over. they were honest mistakes, but i stop and wonder if really did make any difference?

pigs... yeah their can be health problems related to pigs. i've known a few people to get that leptosclorosis (spelling!). it's nasy and can come back repeatedly through life, however i think the worst is the first attack. maybe if pigs had a healthier diet they would be cleaner, but they seem to just get fed a whole lot of rubbish. one lot that got brought in to a works i was at had been fed on basically a diet of sharks and they ended up getting rejected for the high levels of ammonia.

... i'll just carry on a bit more with the pigs. with pigs unlike most meat we eat they have a rather voracious appetite. this allows for a larger variety of foods where pig famers will resort to the cheapest available, usually past used-by date bread... however a common food for pigs is also left-over scrapes which may be the worst as it can be rotten food or food for shops that have fallen on the floor. that's where problems could reside.

Originally posted by Kaboooomba
i was working on the scales for a time while processing the hallal/non-hallal meat and a few times i forgot to change over. they were honest mistakes, but i stop and wonder if really did make any difference?

pigs... yeah their can be health probl ...[text shortened]... basically a diet of sharks and they ended up getting rejected for the high levels of ammonia.

I believe that the fact that you were processing hallal and non-hallal meat at the same facility would render the hallal meat as non-hallal in most muslims eyes. However they tend to take the stand that it is only a sin if they are aware that what they are eating is non-hallal.

As far as I know there is no valid reason in the world today for pork to be considered generaly less healthy than say beef or chicken other than perhaps the fat content. However in religion a law is made and it stands for all time or untill the religion changes as in Christianity.

Yes pigs eat just about anything. My sister has pigs and she says they eat floor sweepings from the local brewery, maggots from chicken manure, snails and just about anything else they can find. However I am not aware of these actually being unhealthy for the pigs or unhealthy for anyone eating the pigs, chickens and ducks will eat much the same things.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I believe that the fact that you were processing hallal and non-hallal meat at the same facility would render the hallal meat as non-hallal in most muslims eyes. However they tend to take the stand that it is only a sin if they are aware that what they are eating is non-hallal.

As far as I know there is no valid reason in the world today for pork to be ...[text shortened]... pigs or unhealthy for anyone eating the pigs, chickens and ducks will eat much the same things.

the place where i done hallal meat was a different works from the one with the pigs. it was only beef where we done the hallal work. that's interesting... i never knew that.

there must be diseases and that come from food of the floor, and rotten food. in NZ it is the pigs that would eat most of the food scraps from shops. everyone would know what a pig-bucket is, but saying a chicken/duck-bucket would get replied by a funny look. not too sure what the chickens get feed round here... prob. grain and i've never heard of processing ducks here either. just free range duck-shooting.

do you know if you can catch lepto from chickens and ducks? if i'm correct it is more to do with the processing of pigs than eating them where you catch it.

the difference between chickens and pigs in NZ is the pigs generally aren't farmed on a commercial scale. more often it is a farmer who has a few out the back and stocks are found from there. policing from MAF (ministry of agriculture and fisheries) would be hard as they wouldn't be able to police it like a few commercial chicken farms.