Perception of People towards challenges of Halal Meat consumption in Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Food is an essential element to live on earth. It is one of the basic necessities of human being. Human health and quality of food has a deep connection. We take fruits, vegetables, dairy products and meet in our daily lives; these food items provide us rich nutrients which are good for health. Meat is one of the important parts of our food menus, people like to eat meat and enjoy its taste and different kind of dishes prepared from meat. Meat and Meat products are liked in all over the world not only in Asian countries. If we talk about the selection of meat according to the teachings of Islam then the matter of Halal and Haram comes. Muslims consume only Halal meat because it is determined by the religion for them. But what is accurate process of Halal according to Islam, not every Muslim has complete knowledge about it. The practices of Halal meat consumption of our people do not really depend on their knowledge about Halal. Some cases of donkey and dog meat has occurred in our society in last few years. Due to the lack of proper knowledge about Halal meat, the risk of not getting proper processed Halal meat increases. The study was mainly focused to know the perceptions of Halal meat consumers and their cultural norms and values also affect the consumption patterns. The study was carried out in two districts of province Punjab. Faisalabad and Lahore was selected purposively, due to a number of cases of donkey meat was identified in these areas in last few years. A sample of 480 respondents was selected. An interview schedule method was used to collect data for quantitative analysis. Findings depicted that majority of the meat consumers were agreed that after hearing the news of donkey and dead meat being sold in market and served at restaurants, they don’t prefer to go to restaurants. Knowledge can help us to identify different things and we make perceptions on the base of our knowledge. So, most of the respondents were agreed that knowledge about halal procedures can help us to identify the difference between halal and haram or dead meat. In inferential statistics there is a significant relationship was found that cultural norms affects the meat patterns of consumers and they purchase and buy according to their culture. A positive relationship was found between knowledge of Islamic characteristics of Islam and consumption of Halal meat. A positive relationship was found that social media can play its role to spread knowledge about the cases of dead meat and can give right information to pay attention while purchasing meat from shops.