For cooking lessons

“Halal only”: uproar over shopping list at school

According to the shopping list, only halal-certified meat should be served in cooking lessons.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Imre Antal, zVg)

A teacher at the secondary school in Felixdorf caused a veritable wave of indignation with a letter. Meat for cooking lessons should only have been bought from Turkish supermarkets. Now they have backtracked.

Read ingredients carefully, give preference to cheap brands, chop off what you have bought (sic!) - so far the list for cooking lessons at Felixdorf secondary school in the Wiener Neustadt district does not read unusually. However, point 7 raised the hackles of many. In it, the teacher writes that due to the large number of Muslim pupils, great importance is attached to buying meat products exclusively from Turkish supermarkets (see facsimile above). This guarantees that only halal-certified meat is served.

As soon as we became aware of the unapproved letter, we had an urgent, unequivocal and admonishing conversation with the teacher.

Stellungnahme der Bildungsdirektion

Huge outcry on the internet
This went too far for many parents. Not mainly for religious reasons, but because many people immediately think of animal cruelty when they think of halal meat. The outcry, especially on the internet, was too great and the education directorate had to pull the ripcord quickly. "As soon as we became aware of the unapproved letter, we had an urgent, unequivocal and admonishing conversation with the teacher," a spokesperson explained in response to an inquiry from Krone. The content of the letter was immediately withdrawn in full by the school management and a new letter was sent to the parents.

Consideration only for regional products 
The Directorate of Education also points out that when purchasing food, consideration should only be given to regional production. "Such unauthorized information for parents on the part of the teacher is absolutely not the line of the Lower Austrian Education Directorate and is rejected in the strongest possible terms," it says.