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Muslims are encouraged to cut the middle man and consider running their own farms. (IOL photo)
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NEW YORK — American Muslims, like Muslim minorities in the West, concern themselves with eating halal meat, which usually focused on slaughtering animals according to Shari`ah.
Discovering more about what animals are being fed before being shipped to slaughterhouses, whether Islamic or not, many Muslims are wondering what the term halal meat really implicates.
"I don’t think artificial means should be used to fatten up animals," Amina Khan, an alarmed 30-year-old housewife, told IslamOnline.net.
"It is unnatural."
In the United States, it is common to feed chickens, turkeys, pigs and cows the blood, bone and unwanted flesh of farm animals mixed into their regular animal feed.
Most animals today are injected with hormones for them to grow large in short periods of time and are being intensively raised in small pens, cages and feedlots.
"It was terrible and filthy," said Zeenat Sultana, a 40 year-old school teacher, after watching a news segment showing chickens living in cramped conditions in dirty cages on an American factory farm.
