Not all Tesco meat is halal

Warning: The Facebook post linked to in this article contains graphic images.

A post on Facebook with over 1,000 shares claims that all meat sold at Tesco is halal, except pork produce.

This is not true. Tesco sells halal meat in some of its stores but not all of its meat is halal. It’s true that no pork products are halal, as eating pork is forbidden in Islamic law.

‘Halal’ in the context of meat consumption refers to the process of slaughtering the animal in accordance with Islamic law. There are several parts to this process.

In a series of tweets, Tesco said:

“We understand that some customers do not want to eat meat that has been blessed. For these customers, we are able to guarantee that our British Organic lamb as well as British Organic, Free Range and Finest Free Range chicken has not received a Halal blessing. ​

Like all other major UK supermarkets, we source from suppliers who serve Muslim as well as non-Muslim customers. Some of these suppliers process all their meat to Halal standards which allows them to export parts of the carcass not used by European customers to the Middle East, minimising food waste. For example, the vast majority of New Zealand lamb is processed by Halal standards. All the meat we sell from these suppliers is stunned before slaughter, the only difference being that Halal meat has received a blessing.”

There is currently no domestic UK law (or European regulation) saying halal or kosher meat products must be labelled as such. But the government said in response to a petition on the matter in 2019 that “where any information of this nature is provided, it must be accurate and must not be misleading to the consumer.”

The Food Standards Agency surveyed slaughterhouses in England and Wales in 2018 and found that for almost all species, non-religious methods of slaughter were used in the majority of animals, except for sheep, where 71% were slaughtered by a halal method (both stun and non-stun).