Strict Liability Food Law and Halal Slaughter

Abstract

Probably many people living in the UK today experience some degree of fear or suspicion, or even hostility, towards Shariah law. Barbaric punishments for breaches of criminal law, medieval cruelty in its treatment of apostates and women form vivid images of the practices of Shariah law in countries where it dominates as a system of law. But legal systems are far more complex, and points of engagement between Shariah and state law in non-Muslim countries receive less attention. Shariah, or Islamic, law appears to be very different from the more familiar state law, whether by state law we mean English law, Anglo-Welsh law, Anglo-Northern Irish law, Scots law, EU law or some combination of these. Islamic law is not isolated from state law and neither is it necessarily at odds with state law. The relationship between these systems is complex—as is the significance of non-state law—and not well understood by legislators, lawyers or the public at large. This comment is concerned with Halal food law. Food law in the UK is comprised mainly of strict liability regulation based on the criminal law and is enforced by local authority environmental health and trading standards services. A statutory authority—the Food Standards Agency— was set up in 1999 in order to ensure that high standards in the production and safety of food are maintained. This is a field that excites little interest amongst the general body of lawyers, but to Muslims food law is of primary concern. The distinction between that which is permitted—Halal—and that which is Haram, or forbidden, is of fundamental importance to Muslims. That does not mean that there is a consensus on what is permitted. Islamic jurisprudence is interpretative and based on religious scholarship and on various schools of thought that allow important differences to subsist in how juridical categories are interpreted. Shariah law is preoccupied with this complex and contested field: religious beliefs