KFC Unveiled

CAUTION: Reading of the following report may cause extreme discomfort in your daily life but may also be the source for great reward in the hereafter, InshaAllah.

Before you read on, I want to make clear a few points.  I am not affiliated with any restaurant or meat slaughter house and do not gain anything from the loss or gain of business by KFC of Lombard.   I do not have any personal agenda for or against the owner of KFC.  I AM a fan of food and a strong supporter of reshaping and molding amenities that most Americans enjoy, to submit to the guidelines of Islam, so that they can be enjoyed by my Muslim brothers and sisters….; but not the other way around where the attempt is to reshape and mold Islam, in every which way, to submit to the childish desires of our Nafs.

When I decided to get to the bottom of the KFC Lombard issue, Allah did not even give me the chance to struggle and search for evidence.  I had only expressed my discomfort of having eaten meat at KFC Lombard only to be later told that there is reason to believe that the meat may not have been Zabiha* and only mentioned that I plan on looking into the matter… and SubhanAllah, the work was promptly done on it's own.  The online research was done by a brother and the actual footwork and intensive research was done by Br. Rasheed Ahmed of Muslim Consumer Group, may Allah reward them both.  There isn’t much work they left for me to do except for sharing the findings with you.

One point I would like to add is that the brother at KFC went through the trouble of having the ISA, Islamic Services of America, certify their items like Milk and Egg Mix, Honey BBQ Dry Mix, Honey BBQ Sauce, and Vegetarian Baked Beans but did not have them certify their Chicken.  What sense does that make?  All of the KFC Lombard documents are available on their own site at: http://www.zabihakfc.com/docs.asp?id=docs including the document that poses the problem mentioned later stating that, “Chickens travel from the live hang area to stunner in approximately one minute.  Chickens travel to mechanical kill device in approximately fifteen seconds. Each processing line runs at 140 birds per minute.”

Rather than reinventing the wheel, I am posting the following excerpts from the findings of Br. Rasheed Ahmed.  The detailed report can be found on the MCG website under News / Reports.

The Lombard KFC store gets their chickens from a Co-operative company named Gold Kist based in Atlanta, GA and from plant #1277 in Athens, GA. Gold Kist employed Br. Mubarak Mohammed in maintenance department, part of his job is to say Takbir during slaughtering of chicken on two line by the machine. The two lines run at the same time and kill 140 chickens per minute on each line. The distance between the two lines is about 10 feet. According to Gold Kist the feed is vegetable based. Br. Mohammed fills a Halal certificate by himself stating that" I Mubarak Mohammed hereby certify that I am a Muslim and that the under mentioned shipment of beef- Lamb- Poultry has been slaughtered according to Islamic Rites. Accordingly this meat is Halal and suitable for the consumption of Muslims. I certify that the live stock was alive before the slaughtering and that the method of slaughtering was such that the jugular vein and trachea were cut and the animal was left to be bleed thoroughly."

Here are several objections about the slaughtering methods:

1.      There is a conflict of interest here because Br. Mohammed is an employee of the Gold Kist Company. He can not comments his own views because he works for Gold Kist

2.      We do not have an independent, neutral verification of what happens in the plant.

3.      Halal certification is not done by a professional well reputable Zabiha certifying agency. Nor the slaughtering method was endorsed by a qualified Sheik.                                                     

4. The machine slaughtered Zabiha is not acceptable to all Muslims. 

5.      The system to separate Halal and Non Halal chicken at the plant was not mentioned by both Mr. Fuller and Br. Mohammed.

6.      There is a difference of opinion among Ulema accepting the machine slaughtered Zabiha meat.

7.      The  Muslim Consumer Group for Food Products do not accept machine slaughtered Zabiha meat because it did not satisfy all the Muslims and Muslim Consumer Group can not endorse a machine slaughtered animal as a Zabiha based on advice from our Ulema . We follow the opinions of those Ulema who do not considered machine slaughtered animal as Zabiha.

8.      There is no proof provided by them what Br. Mohammed is saying in his Halal certificate that chickens are alive before machine kill the chickens. Since Chicken is stunned before killing, there is no guarantee that they are alive before slaughtering. It is possible that some be dead  before slaughtering. Br. Mohammed has no time even to check them on a random basis whether the chickens are alive before slaughtering or not because of the speed of the line and he is busy in pronouncing the Takbir for 280 chickens slaughtered per minute. He did not provided the proof that they are live before machine kill them. We do not know the stunning method, whether it is electric shock or passing through boiling water.

9.      Br. Mohammed did not provided any evidence that the blood is complete drawn out of chicken in 2 minutes. 

There is no independent verification what Br. Mohammed told us or what Gold Kist is telling about the slaughtering method at their plant.

- Taken from http://www.muslimconsumergroup.com/news.htm.

* Zabiha process http://www.islam.tc/ask-imam/view.php?q=627