Yesterday I went to town to do groceries in the Folkingestraat. This is a street with a lot of ethnic stores. You can buy genuine Middle-Eastern groceries, but also stuff from the Philippines and Indonesia. I do this about once a month to get all the stuff I cannot find in a regular supermarket. Usually I combine it with the Farmer’s Market on Tuesdays. I usually buy in bulk because that’s cheaper.
The reason I get part of my groceries at the market square and part in ethnic stores is only partly for practical reasons. I buy some things for religious reasons as well. I wrote about Christian stewardship before and how this means I try to eat green. I only eat Fair Trade chocolate, bananas, mangos and other luxury items. They are luxury because I don’t consider coffee, chocolate, tropical fruits and such to be ‘basic needs’. I also try to eat local vegetables and fruit which are in season. I avoid imported stuff where I can, not only out of ideology but also because imported usually means it’s not fresh. I hardly eat meat because organic meat costs a fortune when you’re on welfare. I try to circumvent it by going to the Arab butcher, who only sells halal meat. Halal meat is by definition green because this follows directly from the Muslim idea of stewardship.
So when I returned home from the Arab butcher and the neighbouring supermarket and toko I just put a plurk online to indicate what I have been doing. I didn’t think about it, until I saw my plurk got a ton of responses. According to some people, eating halal meat means that you’re endorsing animal cruelty, because animals aren’t being sedated when they are slaughtered. Is it appropriate to eat halal meat as a Christian?
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