Halal Chicken – what does it really mean?

One issue that continues to be raised regularly by consumers surrounds the 

production and supply of Halal chicken.

Questions raised include where can I buy Halal chicken? where can I buy 

non-Halal chicken? why do chicken producers supply it? why don’t they 

produce or supply it? and, what does the production of Halal chicken entail?

There’s certainly a lot of confusion amongst consumers about what Halal 

chicken means, how it is produced and what it means in terms of bird welfare, 

price and many other aspects.

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What is Halal Chicken?

Halal food is food which adheres to Islamic law, and is therefore acceptable for 

Muslims to eat. Halal food laws specify not only what types of foods and 

beverages can be eaten, but also how the food is prepared.

Therefore, Halal chicken has been processed and prepared according to Islamic 

law.

In practice, Halal Chicken means the following:

• a prayer is spoken at the commencement of slaughtering in the processing plant;

• the person supervising the slaughtering process must be of Muslim faith; and

• the processing plant has to be accredited by the local Muslim cleric.

If you actually went to a Halal accredited processing plant and witnessed the processing 

of chickens, you would not be able to distinguish it from what happens in a non-Halal 

plant. All birds are stunned prior to slaughter. For bird welfare and product quality reasons, 

all plants need to have at least one person supervising the slaughtering process, whether 

Halal or not, so staffing levels are identical whether producing Halal chicken or not.

Some common miscunderstanding amongst Consumers:

1. The Halal slaughter process is somehow ‘cruel’

WRONG!

This misunderstanding seems to stem from an incorrect belief that chickens killed in Halal 

have not been stunned prior to slaughter. This misconception has possibly arisen because 

the procedures for Halal slaughter can vary from place to place due to differing interpretations 

of the Koran, and Halal slaughter in overseas abattoirs may not always include stunning. 

All Halal slaughter of chickens includes prior stunning.

The stunning process doesn’t kill the birds; it is a process used to render the chickens 

instantaneously unconscious and insensible to pain prior to them being killed. Perhaps 

not a subject many people want to hear about, but the birds are actually slaughtered by 

severing of the blood vessels in their necks, so that they die from blood loss (exsanguination). 

However, the stunning process ensures that they do not regain consciousness prior to their 

actual death by exsanguination.

2. All consumers of chicken meat end up paying more because of the costs of 

Halal accreditation, even if they don’t want Halal chicken themselves

NO!

To meet the Halal accreditation requirements imposes minimal additional costs on chicken 

processors. For a start, chicken processors have to have someone supervising the killing 

process – so there are no additional staff involved. For a plant which has both an Halal and 

non-Halal market, to change staff and segregate product based just on the minimal 

requirements involved just wouldn’t make commercial sense – it is simply more efficient to 

apply the practices required across the whole production run than to change staff / practices 

and segregate product.

In reality, processing plants are subject to or participate in a range of certification and auditing 

programs covering a range of product attributes such as bird welfare and product safety or 

quality. Some of these are required by different customers or the various market sectors they 

supply. The bigger the plant, generally the more diverse the market it serves and the greater the 

number of certification and auditing programs it will need to adhere to. In most cases it is more 

cost effective to simply run the practices required by the each program across the entire production 

run, so that all product qualifies to be labelled and marketed as complying with the requirements 

of a range of different customers or market segments, even though not all products will actually 

be labelled as complying with each program.