010318 Disease Leaves English Muslims Without Lamb

Bradford, England - The Saqib Halal Meat shop should have been bustling with customers buying ritually slaughtered lambs for the upcoming Muslim holiday.

After all, the three-day Eid-al-Adha feast - the most important of the Islamic calendar - begins Monday morning, but by Thursday there were no lambs for sale at the corner butcher shop.

Saqib Halal Meat, like dozens of other such butchers in the large Muslim center of Bradford, have been cut off from their meat suppliers because a widespread outbreak of highly contagious foot and mouth disease has brought a clampdown on the movement and slaughter of livestock.

It is unlikely that Muslims in Britain and Northern Ireland will have the traditional slaughtered lamb for Eid-al-Adha, which commemorates Abraham's sacrifice of a ram to God instead of his son. The celebration, which is sometimes called Eid-al-Kabir, centers on the slaughter of a sheep or other animal.

Foot and mouth disease affects cloven-hoofed animals, including sheep. Because the virus that causes it is so contagious, more than 7,000 animals have been killed and burned in an effort to halt its spread. Hundreds of farms have been shut down and the transport of animals is banned.

"With Eid coming, we are having a big problem with meat," said Saif Urrehman, a butcher at Saqib Halal Meat. "We need a lot of sheep and lamb and there is none."

Because of Islamic law, the meat has to be slaughtered at a licensed Muslim slaughterhouse. Frozen grocery store lamb would not be an acceptable substitution, said Masood Khawaja, president of the Halal Food Authority.

Khawaja said British politicians have offered a possible relaxation of the ban in areas not affected by the disease for the festival. But even if the ban were lifted this weekend, there would not be enough time for the Muslim slaughterhouses to prepare the lamb for Monday morning, he said.

"We do not wish to make an exemption for the Muslim community only and we want this horrible, tragic disease to be eradicated," Khawaja said. "So to avoid any hassle, we are asking Muslims to send equivalent money that would be spent on the sacrifice to underprivileged countries.

"Catastrophes have to be looked at from an angle. If the sacrifice cannot be done in the U.K., it can be done elsewhere."

The foot and mouth crisis also is affecting Jewish residents. By Wednesday, all kosher killing of cattle and sheep in Britain had stopped because of the ban on animal movement.

In the Saqib Halal Meat freezer, two lambs purchased before the quarantine hung above boxes of fresh chicken parts. Urrehman said usually there are five or six lambs in the walk-in freezer.

"Every butcher is upset because sales are going down and no one is buying expensive meat," Urrehman said.

At Tasawar Ali Halal Butchers down the street, young men in bloodstained aprons stood at cutting boards piled high with pale chicken parts. The glass meat case in the small, cramped shop held the last of the sheep and lamb.

"After today, we will have no more left. No meat. Nothing," said Khan Shukat, a butcher at the store, on Thursday afternoon. "We are losing money. We are losing everything."

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