Restaurant Depot "Halal" Chicken is Machine Slaughtered
May 27, 2011

Restaurant Depot offers multiple Halal Products Lines that have greatly benefited the Muslims in the greater Saint Louis area. STLHalal has submitted a proposal to certify the Halal products at Restaurant Depot. However, STLHalal releases the following statement in regards to certain frozen chicken sold by Restaurant Depot:

Currently, the chicken is provided by two companies: Koch and Townsend. After contact with these companies, STLHalal has learned that both companies employ a method of mechanical slaughter. According to the majority of Islamic scholars, machine slaughter does not meet many of the Halal requirements including the recitation of the name of Allah on the animal, the intent to slaughter the animal, and the slaughter attributed to a human. Under our guidelines, and those of Halal Advocates of America, slaughter in this manner does not constitute a Halal slaughter. Therefore, STLHalal encourages all Muslims in the Greater Saint Louis to abstain from purchasing or using Koch or Townsend products from Restaurant Depot. While we encourage Muslims to purchase the Halal products, we recommend Muslims stop purchasing these machine-slaughtered chicken products immediately. We ask Muslims to present one unified voice on such crucial issues.

The consumption of authentic Halal food products is a vital issue for all Muslims because of the great harms of consuming unlawful food mentioned in the Quran and Hadith. The Muslim community of Saint Louis should do their best to consume only hand slaughtered meat products in order to preserve their faith and avoid matters of doubt.