The Malaysian Islamic Development Department, a religious government body, has begun a campaign to force restaurants and cart owners to rename hot dogs to avoid offending Muslims. The reason, Director Sirajuddin Suhaimee explained with a straight face, is that “In Islam, dogs are considered unclean and the name cannot be related to halal certification.” So chains like Auntie Anne’s has been told it cannot receive halal certification without calling hot dogs something else.
The Malaysian halal food guidelines say “halal food and halal artificial flavour shall not be named or synonymously named after non-halal products such as ham, bak kut teh, bacon, beer, rum and others that might create confusion.” So much for hamburgers.
The officials favor “Pretzel Sausage” rather than “Pretzel Dogs” as an example of the new Halal-compliant titles. Of course, there is always “Franks” or “Frankfurter” or “Weiner” or “Red Hots.”
Unfortunately, Pillsbury renamed its current “Crescent Dog” but the earlier “pig in a blanket” is unlikely to satisfy the morality police. How about “hot halals”?
In the Philippines they had (have?) rice hounds. Won’t describe the process, but as a 7 yr old, I had a puppy that was known as a rice hound when I lived south of Manila many yrs ago. I sobbed when we left as I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t end up as his predecessors. An original hot dog???
I didn’t know about hotdogs until we returned to the States. And of course, there were those rumors of rat hair etc in the filler. So I imagined that dogs were included.
Now-a-days, I love a fresh hotdog and a Coke and a few fries, potato chips preferred.
On the other hand, we waste perfectly good horse meat, probably because of “Black Beauty.”
Not one pet or horse survived the siege of St Petersburg, Russia, and of course, there is the Donner Party which predates the carving off of pieces of the dead during the siege in Russia.
Personally I don’t see the difference in eating them or us if a death by starvation is at hand. Of course the human would have died rather than be killed.
Please don’t launch on a species rant. What we eat is always determined by the primal desire to live and availability.
Ready for lift off!
How about calling them rectal rockets? That should satisfy these anal minded Muslims.
When these religious lunatics open their mouths I am always reminded of this skit in Woody Allen’s Bananas: https://youtu.be/6Dnm8N9JbvU
Censor those Muslims. Or exclude them. Like you do commenters on this blog.
Halal is the unnecessary torture of animals to satisfy some inexplicable barbaric disease that rests in the minds of muslims. Any food vendor that gets halal certified will not ever see me as a patron.
May be if hot dogs were made out of goat meat, they would like them. “Hot Goats”!
Another website has a different angle on this story. The Muslims think that the hot dog looks too much like a dong.
The Armour Hot Dog Song:
Hot dogs. Armour Hot Dogs!
What kind of kids eat Armour Hot Dogs?
Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks.
Jew boys, Catholic foys, even imams with chicken pox…
Eat Hot Dogs.
Armour Hot Dogs!
The dogs, kids… like…
TO BITE!
Insanity…why is anyone surprised.
Religion is tyranny.
Progressivism is tyranny. Progressives want to use government force to rename a football team that has had its name for three quarters of a century. Progressives want to use government force to stop people from wearing a hat with a symbol they don’t like. Progressives kick little children out of school for chewing a breaktfast pastry into a shape they don’t like. Progressives want to mandate professors call students some phony made up pronouns they’ve invented. Progressives tried to financially ruin the owner of a pizza shop because she supports heterosexual marriage. Progressives tried to financially ruin the owner of a pro basketball team for using the word “nig!er” in private in a private conversation taped without his consent.
Progressivism is the equivalent of sharia law. If you think they wouldn’t try to use government force to rename hotdogs something else if they could find a reason to pretend to be offended, you are dreaming.
Somebody is trying to preserve their job. This makes no sense otherwise.
Halal is not the same as Kosher. Halal is a rip-off from the Judaic traditions of food. That’s where they stole the concept of not eating pork. However, the Halal procedures typically involve torturing the animals that are permissible to eat as part of killing them, before performing the butchering procedures. Thus, the Muslims have incorporated sadism into their food preparation, far beyond what Kosher practices require. That should be a surprise to nobody who knows anything about Islam. Mere bloodshot is not enough for Islam. It has to involve torture and pain or they get no satisfaction from it.
Even this renaming of “hot dogs” is just another rip-off from Kosher practices. Kosher “hot dogs” have never been called “hot dogs” and the Kosher food processors typically call them “frankfurters” or “franks.” The Muslims are just discovering this, and so they are trying to catch up with the Jews in yet another of their rip-offs.
re: “However, the Halal procedures typically involve torturing the animals that are permissible to eat as part of killing them, before performing the butchering procedures.”
How are the animals tortured? It is my understanding they use the same methods as kosher butchers. According to my bro in law who has worked in the food/bev industry for 40 years the whole kosher designation is a total sham. A rabbi will come into a hotel kitchen say some mumbo jumbo, collect his/her fee and move on to the next business.
Autumn, I don’t eat meat of any kind, but when I did, I looked into slaughtering practices. But I doubt that the Kosher and Halal procedures are any different today. There are YouTube videos of the slaughtering processes so you can see first-hand the 3 basic approaches: traditional stunning, Kosher, and Halal. As I understand it, and as the videos themselves show, stunning knocks the cow unconscious; the throat is slit in the Kosher procedures, purportedly in a single, quick action; and the cow’s throat is cut by a machine in the Halal procedure, which is slower, or alternatively by a sawing action with a sharp knife. As a non-meat eater, I don’t like any of these procedures, but from my observation of the three procedures, the Halal seems the most sadistic. But if you must see the facts for yourself, see this video below of the Halal procedure by knife. But I must warn you: it’s graphic, violent, and bloody. And, of course, there also other videos on YouTube showing the stunning and Kosher procedures. The same caveats apply.
As for the Kosher designation, nobody forces or requires food manufacturers and processors to sell and label their goods as Kosher. It is entirely voluntary. The fact is that majority of consumers of many religions and even atheists prefer that goods be Kosher for reasons having nothing to do with religion or Judaism. Kosher foods are simply perceived to be safer and cleaner to eat. For example, companies that make Kosher foods have to keep records about where the ingredients came from, and kosher foods are checked to help ensure there are no diseases, infections, and adulterations, like insects.
Because of these various things, food manufacturers and processors seek the Kosher certification because it helps sell the products. The cost to obtain certification is an extremely small part of the cost to make and market the products. And the manufacturers and processors consider the cost of the Kosher certification to be an advertising or marketing cost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDheQoAlysE
Wow. They care as much about the name as they do about the ingredients. And they seriously dislike dogs.
Americans do no eat dogs. Miraculously, they are able to discern that there is no dog meat in hot dogs (unless they are imported from China, with country of origin stripped of the labelling, thanks to the World Trade Organization demanding we end COOL. Now, who knows, but I digress…)
However, “hot dogs” got their name from a scandal in the 1840s in which it was discovered that horse and dog meat were actually getting adulterated in the hot sausages sold in buns. After that, it was a kind of joke that you could have literally no idea what meat was actually in sausage (think Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.) So people jokingly called sausages “dogs.” But it was students at Yale who popularized this nickname, with the lunch wagon called The Kennel Club that served the campus, selling “hot dogs.”
In Malaysia, it is not illegal to eat dog or cat meat, although it is rare. So perhaps the problem is that there is something lost in translation, and it is not the customer, but the cook, who may become confused.
So, it seems silly to change the name, because it still doesn’t clarify what meat is actually in it. It could actually be dog, but be sold as “pretzel sausage.” Now, that doesn’t fix the problem, now does it? And if the problem is confusion, customers still would have no idea what meat’s been ground up. (Great. Now I keep thinking about the Sweeney Todd movie.) All this brouhaha about a name doesn’t seem helpful to the public. What seems rather more important is certifying ingredients and listing them prominently.
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/12/usda-ends-cool-enforcement-with-presidents-signature-on-omnibus-bill/#.WAmVazKZOCQ
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/10/the-name-hot-dog-was-not-coined-at-a-new-york-giants-baseball-game/
Interesting post KarenS. Obama is a friend of Monsanto as is HRC. So we will never have labeling in this country.
Fascinating, thanks for the info Karen!
And I thought it was surely a name given by God–since my dogs have always given me so much quality in my life, I thought it was natural to name a tasty and a personal favorite food after them. But I grew up in Appalachia. “Men were men, and sheep were nervous,” as we say here.
halal is the same as kosher
Let’s have a contest to come up with a new name. Anyone can enter, so you too can be a wiener.
Seems many kids back in the 70’s wanted to be an Oscar Meyer one.
Soylent pink.
Hot Sausages and Freedom Fries