Halal Food
in UK University Cafeterias
By Dr Rizwana Rahim
Chicago, IL
In
October, the British weekly, ‘The Economist’,
had a small report on halal food in the student
cafeterias of some universities. Here’s
a summary:
For the past 18 years, Vasilis Anastasiou, sold
halal meet from his kebab shop in Cambridge .
He pays extra 5% for halal meat, but has picked
up lot of business from Muslim students. He was
also asked by the University’s Islamic Society
to host their meetings. Halal food stores cater
to ‘niche appetites’, and such limited
demands too often ignored by large institutions
are often picked by some sharp entrepreneurs.
Last November, Muslim students at Leicester University
managed to persuade their Union cafeteria to stop
selling pork products, and go exclusively halal.
Sheffield Hallam University now has on campus
a branch of Hally Ally’s which is a halal
fast-food chain. Two more of its branches are
going to be opened by the end of this year in
some North England universities.
Sheffield served halal dishes in its main cafeteria
for years, but concerns by Muslim students grew
over the acceptability of the halal dishes which
were being served along with the non-halal dishes.
These days the caterers are sensitized to these
concerns to even check ahead if cooking the food
in certain oils or pans will be acceptable to
the Muslim student populations which strictly
observe halal.
Masood Khwaja, President of Halal Food Authority,
who has been surveying campus kitchens for the
past six months, plans to evaluate the caterers
to these cafeterias the same way as his organization
routinely does supermarkets and slaughterhouses.
These concerns about halal reflect a growing population
of Muslim students in the UK universities. A decade
ago, there were estimates of about 4,040 Pakistani-British
students in the UK universities, a population
that has more than doubled now (8,450). During
the same period, there was a three-fold increase
in the population of Bangladeshi students.
At Oxford, some animal rights groups, as well
as secular societies, have protested the way halal
animals are slaughtered (the zabiha process).
How effective these protests are, would be guided
ultimately by the financial considerations. Some
of the observant Muslim students come to the UK
universities from Asia and the Middle East, and
they bring in, individually, 3x more money than
a British student. Recently, Sheffield Hallam
summer school hosted over 500 Malaysian students
(mostly Muslim), and if they were to decide to
continue, each will bring to the University about
$16, 800 (or about 9,000 British pounds) in yearly
fees.
South Asian food is also quite popular with the
British. There are nearly 6,000 Indo-Pak and Bangladeshi
restaurants in the country, including as I recently
noticed even in less-populated British towns,
and as far north in the Highlands (northern Scotland)
as Inverness, as well as in the Western Isles
(off the west coast of Northern Scotland). South
Asian items (like mini-pappadums, chicken-tikka
baguettes, curry, etc.) are sold in many British
stores, and in the service area shops along the
British Motorways.
A palate already familiar with curry spices may
not mind a halal ‘sub-species’ of
that – not if this specialty also attracts
more students, helps show a religious sensitivity
and build bridges between the communities at the
same time.
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