Provincial inmates will soon be able to eat food that complies with Islamic dietary restrictions after a push from an Edmonton social services agency.
The Alberta Ministry of Public Safety and Emergency Services on Friday said it is working “quickly” to implement halal food options for prisoners in provincial remands and jails.
Ali Daoud Smith, who meets with dozens of Muslim inmates each month for IslamicFamily, a social services agency, said the lack of halal food is a constant complaint.
“It’s hard to exaggerate how often people want to talk about this. I’d say that nine out of 10 people that we see ask us about halal food.”
Halal food complies with Islamic tenets around the humane treatment and slaughter of animals. Animals are slaughtered with a deep cut across the throat and jugular, which aims to minimize suffering. The butcher is required to say a prayer before killing the animal. Pork products and alcohol are strictly forbidden.
Observant Muslims jailed in Alberta typically eat the vegetarian meals offered prisoners, Smith said. However, that still falls short of halal requirements, given the likelihood the tray was used to serve pork. Sometimes, an inmate will simply be given a regular meal with the meat removed, raising cross-contamination issues.
Alberta jails — which house pretrial inmates as well as people sentenced to two years or less — are becoming in outlier in not offering halal food, Yaqub said. Ontario, Saskatchewan and Northwest Territories all serve halal options, as does the federal prison system. British Columbia is close to implementing halal as well, he said.
IslamicFamily has done a cost analysis, found providers, and shown “it’s doable within the same budget,” Yaqub added. He made the pitch to government earlier this year but, as of Thursday, hadn’t heard back in months.
Arthur Green, spokesman for Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis, said the government “recently” received the proposal and was “quickly working towards a solution.”
“In addition to these supports, Alberta Correctional Services also provides food services that cater to medical, lifestyle, and religious dietary needs, and is working to implement halal food service delivery across all provincial correctional facilities in the near future.”
Smith, IslamicFamily’s programming and re-entry support research manager, said some of the bureaucrats with whom he’s discussed the issue are surprised halal food isn’t already an option for provincial prisoners.
Halal meat is no longer a speciality item in many communities, he said, noting most Walmarts and other grocery stores have halal sections.
“We’ve priced it out. We have a supplier that supplies all Ontario provincial prisons, that supplies the army, that supplies airlines, and their cost per meal is actually less than Ontario was paying in 2018 for the standard meal.”
Stories of Muslim inmates maliciously fed non-halal food are common, he added.
“Anybody that’s been inside has a story like this,” he said. As one longtime inmate told him: “Back in the day they’d serve you a ham sandwich and you’d say, ‘Oh, I’m a Muslim,’ and they’d just take out the ham and give (the sandwich back) to you.”
Yaqub hopes his group’s advocacy leads to “consistent policy” for providing religious diet to people in Alberta jails.
“It’s low-hanging fruit,” he said. “Let’s create a policy that says who gets what food, because sometimes it could be one individual (staffer) in a prison that determines it, or someone saying, ‘I need to have proof of (your religion)’ … it’s a very arbitrary system, and it leads to inequity.”