On our recent trip to Pakistan (a couple of weeks ago) my sister, her 10 month son, me and a cousin of ours went to ‘Fine Store’ in Lahore for some grocerie shopping. (You can get almost anything imported from Fine Store and it looks like a proper ‘western’ supermarket) We were looking for some babyfood for my nephew as he really likes his little fruit cans by Heinz. To our content we found a whole shelf with Heinz baby products and started to pick and choose. To our horror we bumped into a whole load of Bacon&Beans babyfood cans :-o Me and baji looked at eachother in shock .. wth?
My sis grabbed a can, went straight upto the manager (he was counting his money behind the counter) and asked him directly (in a polite but stern manner) “Sir aapko patta hai bacon ka kya matlab hota hai?” Sir gives us a surprised look and mumbles “Yeah I know what it means” My sister switches to english, gives him an angry look and askes again “Do you REALLY know what it means?” Sir looks around him (for support I suppose) and answers “No I don’t know what it means!” MY sis says “BAcon means pork, soer ka gosht!” and she goes on telling him that she buys Heinz stuff in England for her kid and how could this be available in a muslim country and shy doesn’t he know what it means etc. Manager sahab sab sunn ke kehte hain “well if I don’t know what it means than the importers who import this stuff to Pakistan should know!” My sis gave up the arguement right there! We were both appaled and my sis was so furious she couldn’t find the words to tell him off.
We left the shop, without buying anything.
Later we were thinking ke kitni kharaab baat hai. WHy don’t people in Pakistan know what bacon means?! Because we live in a non-muslim country, we know what we can eat and what is ‘haraam’ gosht. We were raised in that way. If the importer doesn’t know what bacon means, the shopkeeper doesn’t know what it means then how on earth will the ‘innocent’ buyers know?
Anywayz we went back a couple of times, to buy other things and checked the babyfood shelf every time. A week after our ‘visit’ to the manager the Bacon&Beans cans were removed …
Shinoo, I am with you on part of your rant above, if people don't know what bacon is, and people don't expect pork products, the store should mark it clearly that it is a pork product. However, it sounds like you're being intolerant in the sense that a 'muslim' country shouldn't carry pork. There are people other than muslims in pakistan, what if they want to eat pork? Do you routinely like to shove your beliefs down other people's throats?
I agree with Ahmed. I think telling him what was bacon is enough. Some time store owener don't know what they are sellling, going on and on and not buying anything was too much, especially when you went back and bought stuff anyway.
Isn;t the sale of pork and wine prohibited in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan? I believe any income from sale of haraam stuff is also haraam, so that would bar practising muslims from selling it. Are non-muslims allowed to sell this stuff though?
You would think the people who are buying the products from Heinz would have a list of “haraam” products.
This is quite disturbing because it makes me wonder how many people bought the pork and beans for their babies from that shelf
I wonder if you could have found the name and phone number of the supplier so you could have contacted them directly and told them about this ‘blunder’ and to ask them to stop buying haraam products or clearly label them as such.
aahmed, Raima Noveen: Oh yes we went back and bought other stuff. The reason we left the store at that perticular moment was because we were angry at the managers ‘I-don’t-care-attitude’. We were hoping that maybe he would be a little more co-orporative as we were genuinely interested to know the story behind it. I’m well aware of the fact that besides muslims there are various of other religious communities living in Pakistan. I know there’s alcohol etc available in Pakistan and I don’t have a problem with that because when people buy it they KNOW what they are buying. This however is a different issue because like aahmed said, this is about the manager (and thus I assume many other with him) not knowing what bacon means and are still selling it. That to me is indeed a big deal cuz like rukhsarbibi I wonder how many ‘unknowing’ people bought it for their baby?!
^ Yeah but the sale is prohibited to Muslims. The pork section says "only for non-Muslims". You can get pork or other haram stuff from UAE as well. But as far as I've seen it, there is a seperate corner for it. The thigns are not mingled up with normal stuff. Because when you go to buy grocery you're not always reading the ingredients. And when we are living in a Muslim country we should have the right to buy the right stuff, without worrying about its ingredients.
Well in KSA, they had Bacon Chips in various items on the menu at Fuddruckers, McDonalds, Burger King etc, etc, but they were all halal products made up of cow/lamb etc.
Things imported into Muslim countries, usually are monitored. But what the heck, these days ppl back home want to be all posh that they don't care quite frankly anymore! So I'm not really surprised. Welcome to Pakistan :)
with modern chemistry they can produve bacon flavor molecules from oil or else, and it contains no pork
but babyfood products are not as chemically proceded as junk food...so meat in it is real meat, as heinz is a western brand they are using pork in their products
they even did a piece on meat-sources in khi/lhr/isl saying if u are in these 3 major cities of pk, forget having a halaal meat pickup unless u SAW the animal getting slaughtered by the butcher in front of u, u know the butcher, and u know he’s muslim..
No surprise the lack of proper import controls makes this very common...forget about now ..it's been happening for ages..whats sad is that there is 0% awareness that the food is haraam..and I am not just talking about Pork..
People take it for granted that food is halal in Pakistan.
