The Variations in Religious and Legal Understandings on Halal Slaughter

Purpose: This paper attempts to provide an overview of different understandings regarding the concept of "what constitutes halal" and "who determines this concept?" In practice, this equates to contemporary legal understandings versus religious understandings. The paper further aims to provide an overview of competing Muslim understandings regarding the concept of "What does or does not constitute halal slaughter?" In practice, this equates to evaluating the application of no stunning at all upon an animal (unanimous acceptance) versus the application of reversible stunning upon an animal (contested). Design: The study includes a review of priori literature and considers the current scenario of the halal poultry trade and raises important questions regarding Islamic dietary practices, halal food integrity, religious and animal welfare understandings. Three key questions were raised: "To what extent does stunning impact halal slaughter?’, ‘Who determines what is halal slaughter?’ and ‘What are the variations and tensions between legal and religious understandings of halal slaughter?’ Findings: The examination of such requirements and concomitant consumer and provider expectations is underpinned by a study of an operational framework, i.e. industry practices with poultry (hand slaughter, stunning, mechanical slaughter, etc.), ethical values and market forces to appraise whether there is a point of convergence for these that can be beneficial for both seller and consumer concerns. This paper has considered different perspectives on the religious slaughter and provided an overview of competing understandings regarding the above concepts. Originality/value – This study although academic and philosophical in nature, raises questions on route to suggesting future research directions. It provides real value in stimulating more research in the area of halal food production and contributes to the understanding of different slaughter requirements for religious slaughter and the meat industry. It further sheds light on not only the religious and secular legal frameworks on animal slaughter and welfare but also the variations in understanding between them and provides examples of attempts to bridge any gap. The paper highlights the importance of halal food based on religious values and its implications for wider society

Internal shading for efficient tropical daylighting in Malaysian contemporary high-rise open plan office

In tropical climate, there is actually abundant quantity of daylight but yet to be utilised. The excessively high and unpredictable external illuminance could cause non-uniform indoor illuminance distribution and visual discomfort. In order to improve daylighting quality in contemporary high-rise open plan offices, proper design of internal shading should be investigated. A base model was derived from previous case studies for simulation using Radiance. Various venetian blinds, vertical blinds and light shelves were configured for the experiment. Daylight factor (DF) was evaluated for quantitative performance; work plane illuminance (WPI) distribution and vertical plane luminance ratio were investigated for qualitative performance. The findings demonstrated that generally blinds were not a good potential for daylight utilisation but good in reducing luminance contrast. Light shelves improved performances in DF and WPI distribution but increased the luminance contrast. Hence, integrations of light shelves and partial venetian blind (45 closed) were proposed as the effective designs for all orientations. The highest improvements of 31.8% in WPI distribution and 66.7% in luminance ratio were achieved for south and east orientations, respectively. This paper demonstrates that with proper internal shading design, effective daylighting depth can be significantly improved from typically used 2.5 H rule of thumb to 3.6 H