Halal meat

I'm watching Saturday kitchen on BBC1 and there's a feature on hahal meat. This Indian lady just said because the blood is drained before it's butchered the meat is more tender.

I wanna try some, has anyone tried it and is it more tender?

Wuh...? Most meat has the blood drained before butchering... It is fairly standard, at least here in aus, to kill an animal, then hang them to drain and cool... I would have thought this was standard pretty much everywhere

Well there's more to it than just bleeding it I'm just wondering if there is any difference in taste.

A lot of kebab shops are halal, the pizzas they do also have halal meat on them. You have probably already eaten it and not realised.

I didnt know I had eaten it until i realised what the arabic sign for halal meant.

To me its no different in taste.

Yeah you're probably right, I don't eat kebabs that often but the ones I have more than likely been halal.

Halal just means 'permitted' in Arabic. It is butchered by cutting the animal's throat so the blood drains rapidly while it is alive, not once it has already been killed. There may be some small difference in terms of how much blood is drained, but for muslims it is the difference between permitted and forbidden (haraam) meat.

Yeah the animal must have been been fed a natural diet that did not contain animal by-products as well.

Some people say the throat cutting is cruel but I dunno, isn't it better to cut its throat and lose consciousness and essentially die in its sleep than be electrocuted in the skull, often not enough to properly stun or kill and then start to be butchered while still kicking, screaming, and most definitely alive?

I mean neither are really pleasant for the animal but if it was me going through it I'd rather the former.

I doubt that happens very often. In most cases an animal will have a bolt (like a bullet) fired into its brain. This would cause it to die instantly. If you had the choice between being shot in the head and having your throat cut, which would you choose?

Well I've never heard of animals being shot in an abattoir. All the stuff I've seen about it involved electrocution. Yeah I'd prefer the bullet in the head if that's how it happens.

My bad, the bolt is not a bullet, it just strikes the animal hard on the forehead to knock it out instantly, often destroying part of the brain in the process, before it is bled. I'd rather be KO'd before I was bled to death.

Yeah that may be in an ideal slaughter but I've seen videos of animals thrashing about after that and they were most certainly not knocked out.

I've tried all.
They all taste the same.
If they taste or feel different to anyone, I think the cooks' faults in action

I don't see why all meat in restaurants and all that shouldn't be not halal. If there's no difference in taste but means it also allows more people to eat it, then surely it makes sense to have that for all meat?

There are animal rights issues. Most animal rights groups say that the dhabihah slaughter process is unethical since the animal is not rendered unconscious before it is bled.

It's a double edged sword though. Halal animals aren't kept in cages or stalls. All are free range and fed naturally. I'd rather eat a halal chicken that went through 30 seconds of pain than a battery farmed one that went through a lifetime of it.