A Norwegian food safety watchdog have discovered large amounts of pork in food being sold as halal throughout Norway.
The Norwegian Food Safety Authority plan to report Norwegian food company Kuraas to the local authorities after finding that kebab meat they sold to restaurants, which they claimed to be halal, actually contained between five and 30 per cent pork.
“We will file a complaint against the producer,” said Catherine Signe Svinland, who is an adviser at The Norwegian Food Safety Authority. Catherine added, “In a halal product, there should be no pork at all and when we find such quantities we don’t believe it’s an accident but it is in fact fraud.”
In response to these claims, Kuraas have said that they never intended to mislead consumers. The group’s marketing manager, Kenneth Kuraas, has argued that an error in the labeling process may be to blame, “Pork ending up in these products is simply due to routines not being followed.” He added, “Our theory is that it happened when the meat was labeled.”
Regardless of the reason why the mistake occurred, the Kurass company recognizes that eating pork is not allowed in Islam, and so they have sent a letter to the Islamic Council, an organisation that represents Muslims in Norway, apologizing for the error.
In a separate case recently, chicken sausages that were labeled as halal and served to students in nurseries and schools throughout London were also found to contain traces of pork.