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February 20, 2012
French politician and presidential hopeful, Marine Le Pen, is attempting to derail President Nicholas Sarkozy’s second presidential bid by calling his bluff on supposedly halal abbatoirs.
Le Pen claimed during a party congress for her National Front party in Lille on Saturday that all meat produced in abbatoirs in the Paris area was halal and not subject to standard slaughter regulations. According to her, there is not a “single abbatoir in Ile-de-France that is not halal” and she has “proof.”
After leaving behind anti-immigration rhetoric in favor of populist calls to leave the euro and impose protectionist barriers for trade and investment, Le Pen has again returned to the FN’s long-used rhetoric in an attempt to stave off Sarkozy luring her supporters away.
The claims come after a television program “Special Envoy” on France 2, in which François Hallepée, the director of the Ile-de-France Livestock House that also represents breeders, said abbatoirs in the region “all slaughter according to Muslim ritual, therefore 100 percent of slaughter is halal in Ile-de-France.”
Aides to Le Pen said she would file a legal complaint against distributors for “misrepresentation of the product” of halal meat to consumers.
Dominique Langlois, President of the National Association of Interprofessional Livestock and Meat (Interbev) which represents meat industry unions said “Ritual slaughter in France represents less than 10 percent of the total and the Ile-de-France abattoirs represent less than one percent of French slaughter.
“To say that all meat sold in Paris or around Paris is home halal, it is absolutely false.”
The Ministry of Food said Sunday that meat distributed in Ile-de-France was by no means exclusively “halal”, as stated by Le Pen, saying it came from various regions of France and not only the Ile-de-France. “The meat is distributed in the Ile de France comes not only from slaughterhouses [there], because there are very few and these are very small slaughterhouses,” a spokesman said. “It comes mainly from the Rungis market, which come from meats come from all over France,” he added.
Industry professionals claim she has confused ‘slaughter’ and ‘distribution.’ According to Frédéric Freund, the director of OABA, the movement for assistance for abbattoired animals, three of four meat abattoirs in the region practise ritual slaughter without stunning. The fourth is a pig slaughterhouse. There are no figures for poultry abattoirs. “The problem,” says Freund, “is that this meat (halal) are not found in all distribution channels halal. As a result, consumers unwittingly eating the meat of the Jewish ritual slaughter or Muslim.” OABA said that not all halal meat ended up in halal shops and consumers sometimes eat it without being aware of it.
Le Pen is third in poinion polls behind front runner Francois Hollande and incumbent Sarkozy as she struggles to avoid a repeat of 2007, when Sarkozy wooed the far right, destroying her support base.
The first round of the presidential election is on April 22, although the final round on May 6 is expected to be a showdown between Sarkozy and Hollande, with Hollande in the lead in polls so far.
There has been a noted increase into anti-Muslim sentiment in France in the political sphere, with a ban on the burqa coming into force in April 2011, and a ban on street prayers after Muslims were forced to pray in the streets as there were not enough mosques to accommodate them.
BY AL ARABIYA WITH AGENCIES
