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It is the expectation of Halal consumers that the meat they buy in retail shops and restaurants are ethically and legally reared and slaughtered in approved premises to protect animal welfare and public health. While this may be the case in multinational and well-established supermarkets due to due diligence on the part of retailers, there is evidence to suggest that some independent retail shops and ethnic restaurants in the UK partake in selling meat from illegally slaughtered animals. It is a crime that involves many players, but usually masterminded by rural entrepreneurs, including rogue farmers who supply the animals for illegal slaughter and further processing into smokies, or as part of the Islamic festival of Qurbani, in makeshift abattoirs. The purpose of this paper is to highlight illegal slaughter of sheep for the Halal market and how these impacts on food integrity and animal welfare.

This paper examines the legality of slaughter in accordance with UK animal welfare and food safety legislations. The documentary research approach is adopted to examine available information on the activities of organised criminal gangs in the production of smokies and their possible involvement in Qurbani fraud.

This paper demonstrates the involvement of some rogue farmers who are facilitating the smokies trade and illegal slaughter of sheep during the Qurbani sacrifice. It is worth noting that while these illegal activities occur in the Halal sector, the perpetrators are not always Muslims. The processing of illegally slaughtered sheep takes place in unhygienic conditions which is of food safety, public health concern and may violate the religious rules around slaughter.

Illegal slaughter for the Muslim sacrifice of Qurbani is underreported, this paper aims to highlight the animal welfare and food safety aspects of this type of slaughter, in addition to those slaughtered for smokies production.

Prosecutions under Criminal Law, associated in the minds of most people with “criminal offences” of a serious nature—“crime” in the traditional sense—and undertaken by the police authorities, constitute a very large and rather untidy body of public law. It includes a large and constantly growing number of offences in respect of which prosecutions are undertaken by various corporate bodies who, as in the case of local authorities, have a duty albeit with a power of discretion, to prosecute. There would appear to be little in common between such offences, as smoking in the presence of open food or failing to provide soap, nail‐brushes, etc, for food handlers, and the villainy and violence of the criminal, but their misdeeds are all criminal offences and subject to the same law. Other countries, such as France, have definite Criminal Codes and these offences against statutes and statutory instruments which in English Law are dealt with in the broad field of Criminal Law, are subject to special administrative procedure. It has obvious advantages. Although in England and Wales, prosecutions are undertaken by police authorities, local authorities, public corporations, even professional bodies and private individuals, with a few statutory exceptions for which the Attorney‐General's fiat or consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions is necessary, may instigate a prosecution against anyone if he can provide prima facie evidence to support it. In Scotland, prosecutions are instituted at the instigation of the various authorities by an officer, the Procurator‐Fiscal. Many advocate such a system for England and Wales, despite the enormous difference in the volume of litigation. Supervision of prosecutions on a much smaller scale is by the Director of Public Prosecutions, an office created in 1879, with power to institute and carry on criminal proceedings—this is the less significant of his duties, the number of such prosecutions usually being only several thousands per year—the most important being to advise and assist chief officers of police, clerks to the magistrates and any others concerned with criminal proceedings Regulations govern the cases in which DPP may act, mainly cases of public interest. The enormous growth of summary jurisdiction over the years, especially that arising from so‐called secondary legislation, is largely outside his sphere.

That the health of the body is very closely connected with the nature and quantity of the food we take is a statement in the nature of a self‐evident proposition. When we desist from eating food, starvation sets in after a longer or shorter period, according to the individual; when we eat too much or drink too much, distressing symptoms as inevitably supervene. Moreover, the quantity of food or drink consumed is not the only factor. The quality also is a matter of supreme importance, as in cases of malnutrition, while the various forms of blood disease, more or less loosely classed together as anæmia, appear to be associated to some extent with the question of nourishment. Without going so far as extreme partisans do who would seek to prove that all diseases are ultimately due to the consumption of unsuitable food, as witness, for instance, the views of the more advanced vegetarians and fruitarians, who attribute cancer and other maladies to the eating of meat, it is obvious that a very close connection exists between the health of the body and the nature of our food supply.

The Daily Dispatch publishes a letter from “ One of the Guard” at a war camp, who writes as follows:—

A point repeatedly brought forward for the defence, or at all events for the purpose of mitigating the fine, in adulteration cases, is the statement that defendant's goods have been analysed on former occasions and have been found genuine. As illustrating the slight value of analyses of previous samples may be taken the average laudatory analyses on patent or proprietary foods, drinks, or medicine. The manufacturer calculates—and calculates rightly—that the general public will believe that the published analysis of a particular specimen which had been submitted to the analytical expert by the manufacturer himself, guarantees all the samples on the market to be equally pure. History has repeatedly proved that in 99 cases out of 100 the goods found on the market fall below the quality indicated by the published analyses. Not long ago a case bearing on this matter was tried in court, where samples of cocoa supplied by the wholesale firm were distributed; but, when the retailer tried to sell the bulk of the consignment, he had repeated complaints from his customers that the samples were a very much better article than what he was then supplying. He summoned the wholesale dealer and won his case. But what guarantee have the general public of the quality of any manufacturer's goods—unless the Control System as instituted in Great Britain is accepted and applied ? Inasmuch as any manufacturer who joins the firms under the British Analytical Control thereby undertakes to keep all his samples up to the requisite standard; as his goods thenceforth bear the Control stamp; and as any purchaser can at any time submit a sample bought on the open market to the analytical experts of the British Analytical Control, free of any charge, to ascertain if the sample is up to the published and requisite standard, it is plain that a condition of things is created which not only protects the public from being cheated, but also acts most beneficially for these firms which are not afraid to supply a genuine article. The public are much more willing to buy an absolutely guaranteed article, of which each sample must be kept up to the previous high quality, rather than one which was good while it was being introduced, but as soon as it became well known fell off in quality and continued to live on its reputation alone.

The “greening” of preserved vegetables by addition of sulphate of copper can only be regarded as an abominable form of adulteration, and it is passing strange that in this year of grace 1904 it should still be necessary to endeavour to impress the fact, not only upon the public generally, but upon the Government authorities and upon those who are concerned in the administration of the Food Acts and in adjudicating under their provisions. It ought surely not to be necessary to insist upon the tolerably obvious fact that the admixture of poisons with food is a most reprehensible and dangerous practice, and that the deliberate preparation and sale of food thus treated should be visited with condign punishment. The salts of copper are highly poisonous, and articles of food to which sulphate of copper has been added are not only thereby rendered injurious to health, but may be extremely dangerous when swallowed by persons who happen to be specially susceptible to the effects of this poison. After a lengthy investigation, the Departmental Committee appointed by the Local Government Board to report on the treatment of food with preservatives and colouring matters condemned the practice of adding salts of copper to food and recommended that the use of these poisons for such purposes should be absolutely prohibited. Without any such investigation as that which was conducted by the Departmental Committee—and a most thorough and painstaking investigation it was—it should have been sufficiently plain that to allow or to excuse the practice in question are proceedings utterly at variance with common sense.

IN the last article it was pointed out that any form of starch as a substitute for milk sugar, the natural carbohydrate of human milk, was highly undesirable in an infant's food unless such food was to be administered under the supervision and control of a medical man. The same remark would also apply more or less to invalids' foods, and especially to brands containing raw, or only very slightly altered starch. Having regard to the object for which such preparations are intended ease of digestion is of the utmost importance, and it cannot bo contended that any starches in their natural condition can lay claim to this property. It is, however, possible so to prepare them that a very largo proportion of their weight is soluble in cold water, and where so prepared the objection is very largely removed.

This is the age of research. What was once a highly selective privilege in just a few professions that could be counted on one's fingers has since the last war become a feature of every conceivable branch of science and trade, to which millions in money are devoted. The connection often seems remote, if not a little spurious. Perhaps it may be due to the enormous emphasis on the teaching of science and technology in recent years, but we see what Sir William Dale calls “these turnspits of modern science” ready to undertake, and various official bodies to finance by grants, research into almost anything. The amount spent, for example, on cancer research through the years and all over the world, which incidentally has produced very little in the way of real advancement towards a cure, must be phenomenal, but it is now probably dwarfed by the colossal sums available for trade and market research. We even see research by opposing groups, one endeavouring to prove, the other to refute some particular hypothesis. Much of it appears to lack realism or to be of any great practical value and at too high a theoretical level, including masses of statistics, without which the younger generation of scientists appears to think research valueless, if not impossible.

After a few years away from the countryside, a brief visit to some farms in the heart of England reveals a changed scene. Farming is obviously prosperous and there are now many more young men farming; because of better conditions, older men have been able to retire and hand over to the younger man who has often attended an agricultural college and shows it in the methods he employs, especially in milk production Nowadays there seems to be a surfeit of machines, a greater use of machine‐milking, sometimes with pipe‐systems to cooler and direct to churns, without manual effort from start to finish. The rural water supply schemes and electrification between the two wars have revolutionised farming and taken the drudgery out of milk production. The farm kitchen is a revelation and the farmer's wife, young, strong, efficient, attractive and fashionable, surrounded with every electrical domestic appliance devised by the ingenuity of man, is as much changed as the farmer himself.

Much to the relief of everyone, the general election has come and gone and with it the boring television drivel; the result a foregone conclusion. The Labour/Trade Union movement with a severe beating, the worst for half a century, a disaster they have certainly been asking for. Taking a line from the backwoods wisdom of Abraham Lincoln — “You can't fool all the people all the time!” Now, all that most people desire is not to live easy — life is never that and by the nature of things, it cannot be — but to have a reasonably settled, peaceful existence, to work out what they would consider to be their destiny; to be spared the attentions of the planners, the plotters, provocateurs, down to the wilful spoilers and wreckers. They have a right to expect Government protection. We cannot help recalling the memory of a brilliant Saturday, but one of the darkest days of the War, when the earth beneath our feet trembled at the destructive might of fleets of massive bombers overhead, the small silvery Messerschmits weaving above them. Believing all to be lost, we heaped curses on successive Governments which had wrangled over rearmament, especially the “Butter before Guns” brigade, who at the word conscription almost had apoplexy, and left its people exposed to destruction. Now, as then, the question is “Have they learned anything?” With all the countless millions Government costs, its people have the right to claim something for their money, not the least of which is the right to industrial and domestic peace.