Toronto Star – May 4, 2011
The sign at the halal meat counter at Sunny Foodmart says “We can speak your language!” It lists 10 (Urdu, Punjabi, Turkish, Russian, Bengali, English, Pashto, German, Arabic and Parsi) that staff can speak, though there are certainly more, like French. Sunny Foodmart is owned by three Chinese Canadians who have stocked food from a multitude of cultures and reached out to Muslim customers with a certified halal meat counter.
Provincial and federal food agencies don’t do religious certification for the halal market, so self-regulating certification agencies have sprung up. Sunny pays $150 a month to the Halal Monitoring Authority (HMA), which inspects and certifies slaughterhouses, meat processors and distributors, butchers, restaurants and fast-food outlets.
