[MontaniSemperLiberi]

I heard this on a talk radio show the other day and found it hard to believe. I found the above customer response on some blog and still found it hard to believe. Yet going to the butterball web site, I find out it's true:

Trusted Value. Amazing Variety. Great Taste.

With expertise in catering to the cultural and linguistic needs of countries all around the world, we are USDA Approved, Russian Approved, and Halal Certified. Butterball has a wide-array of product choices to serve almost any price point and market, and will work with you to meet specific product needs. With both the Butterball and Carolina Turkey brands, you will find all of the high-quality products and experience you need to make every meal a celebration.

http://products.butterballcorp.com/intl/#

For those of us unfamiliar with halal, the Butterball website has a helpful definition,

Halal – an Arabic word which means “lawful” or “allowed.” The opposite of halal is haram, which means “unlawful” or “prohibited”. Halal foods are foods that are permitted for consumption by Muslims under Islamic law. All foods are considered halal except the following, which are haram: swine/pork and its by-products; animals improperly slaughtered or dead before slaughtering; animals killed in the name of anyone other than Allah (God); alcohol and intoxicants; carnivorous animals, birds of prey and animals without external ears; blood and blood by-products; foods contaminated with any of the above products. Foods containing ingredients such as gelatin, enzymes, emulsifiers, etc. are questionable (mashbooh) because of the origin of these ingredients is not known.

http://www.butterball.com/tips-how-tos/tips/glossary-of-cooking-terms#H

[TASMANIANRED]

I don’t want a Turkey killed in the name of Allah.

Won’t buy any Butterball products any more.

[KrisKrinkle]

“All foods are considered halal except the following, which are haram: ... animals without external ears;”

Does that mean turkeys have external ears? Where?

[mamelukesabre]

animals without external ears
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

no kidding? So muslims can’t eat fish or shelfish?

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

I can’t believe I started this thread without the infamous Sarah Palin Turkey video!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/21/politics/main4624103.shtml

The fun starts at 2:20.

[Moltke]

Foods containing ingredients such as gelatin,

No gummi bears for you, Ahmed!

[Liberty Valance]

Sarah's Fault.

[AZWildman]

You might go hungry if you were to eliminate all the foods that are Halal Certified. That being said... I only buy fresh, free-range turkeys. Frozen ones are tasteless & dry in comparison.

HOWEVER, if you do the organic free-range birds, you will not be finding the gargantuan ones. You will need to buy two. The really big ones are that way because of hormones & antibiotics & more that are force-fed to the birds.

[fella]

There is a “Butterball Turkey” plant in Huntsville Arkansas, a very small town (it doesn't even have a stop light and it's paper is only ounce a week).The majority of the work force is from, shall we say, south of the border and it's well known that the city and county police have a hands off attitude towards them. But as far as I've heard there are no muslims much less imams there. So how many plants does “Butterball” have? Or are they lying to our peaceful islamists?

[AbolishCSEU]

YAY Multiculturism!! NOT!!

I did notice that the PRICE of butterball turkeys went up a good forty cents per pound from last year (had one in my deep freezer from last year)

THANKS OBAMA!!!! /s

[Oceander]

This is such a pointless waste of bandwidth that it fully deserves the epithet “stupid.”

The first bolded remark, about animals not being improperly slaughtered or dead before being slaughtered is essentially saying that the animals shouldn’t be carrion or roadkill before being sliced and diced and served up as fit for human consumption - unless you like roadkill, I see nothing objectionable about that statement.

The second bolded remark, about the animals not being slaughtered in the name of anyone other than Allah is also utterly irrelevant because Butterball doesn’t slaughter its turkeys in the name of anyone or anything other than, perhaps in the name of profit (which, to-date, is not a recognized cult or religion). Big deal. That remark does not mean that an animal must be slaughtered in the name of Allah, all it means is that the slaughter of the animal cannot have been part of the recognition or sacrifice to some deity other than God and, since everyone seems to have forgotten the point, Allah is the same God as the God of the Torah, and thus of the Old Testament (and of the New Testament as well). Since there are, obviously, a doctrinal differences over the status of Jesus - to my recollection, Islam grants that He was a prophet, but disagrees with the proposition that He was the Messiah - so slaughtering an animal in the name of Jesus would run afowl (pun intended) of the prohibition; however, as far as I can recall, the Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross made animal sacrifice a thing of the past, permanently, so not only does Butterball not sacrifice its turkeys in the name of anyone, it certainly wouldn’t be sacrificing them in the name of Jesus because Christians no longer perform animal sacrifice as part of their worship of God.

All of which is the long way of saying that there is no downside to Butterball taking advantage of Halal to sell its products to a wider audience - that is what capitalism and free markets are all about, so I say: right on Butterball, keep doing what you’re doing because, in addition to making more profit for your shareholders, you’re also watering down the mystical meaning of “Halal” by turning it into nothing more than just another dietary preference, like the difference between choosing Coca-cola over Diet Coke.