The Halal Guide

1.What does "halal" mean?

2.What does halal certification actually check?

• Who's behind the supply: which abattoir or supplier, and whether their slaughter process meets the method above.[4]

• Who issued the certificate: an independent halal certification body, not just the vendor's own say-so.[4]

• Whether it’s still valid: check the certificate against the certifier’s own list or lookup, as halal authorities ask the public to do.[14]

• This is the gap NuHalal’s “Verification” promise is meant to close: when NuHalal opens, we will check this for every listing.

• Halal is a voluntary claim: no government body checks it before it’s made, and no central body oversees halal certifiers, so anyone can set one up. “Organic”, by contrast, has a legal EU standard and an official EU logo. That’s the gap third-party certification, and NuHalal’s checks, are meant to close.[4,15]

3.Who certifies halal

Loading certifiers…

Finland has no national halal certifier, so many products sold here are certified abroad. This list tells you who issues certificates. It is not an endorsement of NuHalal by these certifiers, and their names and marks belong to them.

4.What about the slaughter method in Finland?

• Finnish law requires a "simultaneous stunning" method for religious slaughter: stunning is applied at the same moment as the cut, rather than strictly before it — different from a full pre-stun requirement (like Sweden or Denmark, which ban non-stunned slaughter outright) and different from no stunning at all.[18,20,21]

• This isn’t a loophole — it’s current law (Animal Welfare Act 693/2023), the result of a real 2018–2019 parliamentary fight where an initial proposal to ban religious slaughter entirely was reversed after Parliament’s Constitutional Law Committee ruled it would infringe religious freedom.[19,22]

• Genuinely unstunned slaughter is a criminal offense in Finland, not a minor infraction — in 2022, a slaughterer was convicted and imprisoned for killing roughly 1,300 sheep with no stunning at all over several years, sold as halal meat. This is exactly the kind of claim that looks identical to a genuine one without verification.[23,24]

• In practice, the Finnish Food Authority says halal meat in Finnish slaughterhouses comes only from animals stunned before bleeding. If stunning matters to you, ask your certifier or shop how their meat was slaughtered.[18]

5.Halal in Finland

• Finland has no national halal certification authority like Malaysia’s JAKIM or Indonesia’s BPJPH, and no Finnish certifier is on their lists of recognised foreign certifiers, so most certified halal products sold here carry a certificate from abroad.[16,17]

• Halal-marked products are on mainstream supermarket shelves too (for example in S Group stores), alongside independent halal butchers and grocers.[27]

• That’s why a halal claim is hard to check today, and why NuHalal will check which certifier issued each certificate, not just whether the label says halal.

6.Halal fraud: what has happened, and how to protect yourself

• Reports are rising in the UK: the Food Standards Agency received no reports of suspected halal misrepresentation in 2020 and 16 in 2024; about half were non-halal meat sold as halal. The agency says food fraud in the UK remains very low, and part of the rise may come from better recording.[28]

• Pork where it should never be: in 2013, after the horsemeat scandal, tests found pork DNA in halal-labelled pies and pasties served in prisons in England and Wales, and in halal chicken sausages offered to about 4,400 pupils at schools in Westminster, London. The prison products were withdrawn.[30,31]

• Labels and certificates can be faked: UK courts have fined businesses for counterfeit halal labels, for selling non-halal meat as halal, and for falsely claiming a certifier’s approval.[4]

• Some cases are about the animal, not about pork, such as cheaper beef mixed into mince sold as “100% lamb”. That is still fraud: you should get what the label says.[4]

• Protect yourself: buy from shops that show who certified their products, check the certificate on the certifier’s own list or lookup (section 3), ask the shop where the meat comes from, and be careful with prices far below the usual.[14]

• If something looks wrong, report it to your municipality’s food control rather than accusing a shop in public. In Helsinki, reports go to the city’s food safety team; they are confidential, and a single observation is enough. Officials can check the facts; a public accusation can hurt an honest shop.[29]

Sources

Every statement in this guide cites its source: the Qur’an, hadith, peer-reviewed research, laws and official bodies, or trustworthy media.

1. [1]Qur'an 2:173 · Qur’an
2. [2]Qur'an 5:90 · Qur’an
3. [3]Qur'an 5:3 · Qur’an
4. [4]Fuseini et al. 2017 · Research · Fuseini, Wotton, Knowles & Hadley (2017). Halal meat fraud and safety issues in the UK: a review in the context of the European Union. Food Ethics 1: 127–142 (peer-reviewed)
5. [5]Qur'an 2:168 · Qur’an
6. [6]Qur'an 6:145 · Qur’an
7. [7]Qur'an 16:115 · Qur’an
8. [8]Sahih Muslim 2003 · Hadith · "Every intoxicant is khamr and every intoxicant is forbidden"
9. [9]Sunan Abi Dawud 3681 · Hadith · Hasan sahih: a small amount of what intoxicates in large amounts is forbidden
10. [10]Qur'an 6:118 · Qur’an
11. [11]Qur'an 6:121 · Qur’an
12. [12]Sahih Muslim 1955 · Hadith · "Allah has enjoined goodness to everything… sharpen the knife and let the animal die comfortably"
13. [13]Qur'an 5:5 · Qur’an
14. [14]Singapore MCCY 2023 · Laws and official bodies · Singapore Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (2023). Verifying the authenticity of halal certificates
15. [15]EU Regulation 2018/848 · Laws and official bodies · Regulation (EU) 2018/848 on organic production and labelling, EUR-Lex
16. [16]JAKIM · Laws and official bodies · JAKIM (Malaysia): Malaysia Halal Portal and list of recognised foreign halal certification bodies
17. [17]BPJPH · Laws and official bodies · BPJPH (Indonesia): Halal Product Assurance Agency
18. [18]Finnish Food Authority · Laws and official bodies · Finnish Food Authority (Ruokavirasto): Slaughter of animals
19. [19]Animal Welfare Act 693/2023 · Laws and official bodies · Finland: Animal Welfare Act (Eläinten hyvinvointilaki) 693/2023, FAOLEX
20. [20]EU Regulation 1099/2009 · Laws and official bodies · Council Regulation (EC) No 1099/2009 on the protection of animals at the time of killing, EUR-Lex
21. [21]European Parliament research 2023 · Laws and official bodies · European Parliamentary Research Service (2023). Religious slaughter of animals in the EU
22. [22]U.S. Library of Congress 2019 · Laws and official bodies · U.S. Library of Congress (2019). Legal restrictions on religious slaughter in Europe
23. [23]Yle 2021 · Media · Yle (2021). Police launch animal welfare probe over slaughterhouse
24. [24]U.S. State Department 2023 · Laws and official bodies · U.S. Department of State. 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: Finland
25. [25]Huotari 2024 · Research · Huotari, R. (2024). Practising Islam in the contested space of Finland. European Academy of Religion and Society
26. [26]Statistics Finland 2024 · Laws and official bodies · Statistics Finland: members of registered Muslim communities, 2024 (via Statista)
27. [27]S-kaupat · Media · S-kaupat (S Group's online shop): a halal-marked product sold in Prisma stores, example
28. [28]Hyphen 2025 · Media · Hyphen (16 Dec 2025). Halal food fraud reports hit five-year high, data shows (UK Food Standards Agency figures, 2020–2024)
29. [29]City of Helsinki · Laws and official bodies · City of Helsinki, food control: Suspected food fraud (how to report; confidential)
30. [30]FoodNavigator 2013 · Media · FoodNavigator (4 Feb 2013). FSA calls urgent meeting after pork DNA found in halal meat
31. [31]Food Manufacture 2013 · Media · Food Manufacture (14 Mar 2013). Pork DNA found in school’s halal chicken sausages

Sources checked: 20 October 2026

This guide has not yet been reviewed by an Islamic scholar. We plan to ask Finnish Islamic bodies to review it; corrections are welcome through Send feedback.