It is widely believed that the followers of Islam are known to be very conservative about their beliefs. It has been seen that the Muslim community tend to impose its will on followers of other religions where Muslims are in majority. But even in the states where they are a minority, they do the same through cartelization and monopolization.
This is what is exactly happening to the meat industry. The ‘meat industry’ across the world is being ‘monopolized’ by the Muslims. It is a known fact that the followers of Islam consume ‘halal’ meat only. As per the definition of Halal Certification Services India Pvt Ltd (HCS), a state-run agency providing halal certification, ‘only the animals slaughtered in the name of Allah are halal’. The slaughter man must be ‘Muslim’ and Bismillah Allahu-Akbar need to be recited before slaughtering the animal.
So, we can decipher two points from above specifications. The first being ‘halal’ meat industry has monopoly of a ‘religious community’ as any other person of other religious community will not slaughter the animal in the name of Allah. The food restaurants chains and slaughterhouses will be forced to employ a Muslim person as the people of the community have ‘specific choices’. The second point is that a ‘religiously processed food’ is being forced on other communities including Hindu, Sikh, Christians as they do not care whether the meat is halal or Jhatka.
Recently in the Zomato controversy, the company had tweeted that ‘Food has no religion, it is a religion’ to take a politically correct stand on social media. But from the aforementioned paragraph, it is very clear that food does have a religion, at least for the Muslims. In India, more than 85 percent of non-Muslim community is being ‘forced’ to adhere by the choice of Muslims.
According to a study by Adroit Market research, the global halal market is worth more than 4.54 trillion dollars. To give a comparison, this is more than the GDP of Germany, India or United Kingdom. By 2025, the global halal meat industry is expected to touch 9.71 trillion dollars with a complete monopoly of Muslims over it.
As per Food Standards Agency of United Kingdom, “51 per cent of lamb, 31 per cent of chicken, and 7 per cent of beef slaughtered in Britain – from a total of 16 million animals per week – is now ‘religiously killed’, which is way more than total Muslim population of the country which is only 5 percent.
The halal meat industry is “of the Muslims, by the Muslims but for everyone’. In countries around the world including the United States, the United Kingdom, and India, the tiny Muslims minority has forced the majority community to adhere by their practices and standards.
This is nothing but sort of economic jihad where a certain section of the community has ‘monopolized’ a trillion dollar industry in the name of religious preferences. The first lesson in elementary economics is that, ‘Monopoly is bad for community’. But here a whole industry, whose value is worth more than GDP of some of the largest economies of the world, has been ‘monopolized’ and economists, lawyers, and activists are silent over it.
This kind of monopoly is also a clear economic boycott of the majority population of the country. As per Indian constitution, economic boycott of SC/ST is punishable offence. The halal industry is sort of economic boycott of SC/ST community and therefore a legal case against the discrimination should be raised by SC/ST welfare commission.