A key tenet of Muslim faith is only consuming meat deemed halal, or permissible — raised and slaughtered in accordance with Islamic law, with the animal’s well-being prioritized. But as demand for halal meat in Maine has outpaced supply, consumers and businesses are forced to travel out of state to find meet their needs.
Hussam Al-Rawi lifted the latch to a small wooden building behind his house in Unity and stepped into his butcher shop.
It’s just one room, with a bandsaw for cutting meat, a circular machine for plucking chickens and an electrical lift for hanging carcasses.
Al-Rawi, originally from Iraq, is an architectural engineer by training. His wife, Kathryn Piper, is from Maine — the couple met while they were both working in Saudi Arabia.
When they moved to Waldo County in 2016, Al-Rawi said they struggled to find halal meat. So they started grazing their own sheep. To learn how to butcher the animals, Al-Rawi went where most people go when they want to pick up a new skill: the internet.
“YouTube took me actually step by step. I highly recommend YouTube,” he said, with a laugh.
From there, he and Piper created Five Pillars Butchery, one of the only halal meat processors in Maine, certified by the state to do custom and wild game processing. It’s still a side gig while Al-Rawi works full time for a solar company.
But he said there’s growing interest in his product from large-scale buyers, including an airline catering company, a food processor in New Hampshire and Sodexo, which supplies universities and health care facilities.
“The demand is already there,” he said. “And institutions are already exploring and looking for somebody who can provide the regulated product.”
To serve that growing market, Five Pillars Butchery is aiming to secure a $2.7 million federal grant to construct a new, 4,800-square-foot, USDA-certified processing facility.
And it’s in the early stages of establishing a halal meat processing cooperative with farmers throughout the region to supply animals to the new facility.
The goal is to increase output from roughly 20,000 pounds of processed meat per year to around half a million, localizing the supply chain.
“I want to keep the money in the state, I will make sure to compete with other suppliers from [out of] state,” Al-Rawi said.
It’s by no means a done deal. But increasing the local halal meat supply can’t happen soon enough for Khadija Ahmed, who owns a mobile food market catering to immigrant communities in the Portland area.
“We have a lot of people from different places who are coming to Maine who are Muslim and are in need of the halal meat,” she said.
To stock her market, Ahmed has to drive to New Jersey once a month to purchase halal meat from a wholesaler.
“Drive across four or five states to be able to get halal meat is — it’s ridiculous,” she said.
Ahmed said the shortage of halal processing facilities is not just a missed economic opportunity. It’s also a matter of food justice.
Through her work as a chef and consultant, Ahmed is helping several southern Maine school districts to pilot halal cafeteria meals. Because, she said, the lack of halal options adds yet another barrier for Muslim immigrant students.
“They don’t know the country. They don’t know the culture. They have to adapt and evolve right there,” Ahmed said. “And we expect them to do all of that hungry? You can’t learn if you are hungry.”
Mahamed Sheikh, who grew up in Lewiston, said he and other Muslim students would sometimes leave school hungry.
He remembered being “eager to come home, you know, run to the fridge, see what mommy cooked or like, what’s on the stove.”
Now, Sheikh is the farm coordinator at New Roots, a 32-acre vegetable farm in Lewiston, and a potential partner in the planned halal meat processing cooperative through Five Pillars Butchery.
Sheikh said most of the halal meat available at local stores is shipped frozen from as far away as Australia. A local processing cooperative, he said, could supply fresh meat, and help his farm expand through the addition of poultry and goats.
“It would definitely be a new market for us,” he said. “A new income stream.”
At Five Pillars Butchery, Al-Rawi tended to his small flock of ewes. Even as he draws up plans for a major expansion, he’s content with the life he has carved out on these 10 acres.
“Being around my family, around my animals,” he said. “Making my own food, serving community, and I think this is what we are doing.”
He said he expects to hear back by April about the grant application to build the new facility for Five Pillars Butchery. In the meantime, he’s passing the slow winter months building a new barn for his sheep.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.