There were only two McDonald's places which have provided halal special food in the U.S. Both of these restaurants were in Michigan, east Dearborn, where lives a considerable part of Arab-American Muslims' population.
But now McDonald's restaurants have excluded its Halal McChicken sandwiches and Halal Chicken McNuggets from their menu after a controversial lawsuit that charged restaurant chain of McDonald's of offering non-halal food declared as halal. This step leads to the ending of unique food that turned those McDonald's restaurants into the popular eating place for Muslim customers.
As a McDonald's spokesperson mentioned: "Those products have been stopped because of our ongoing attempts to concentrate again on our American foods."
At one of those two McDonalds, nearby the Ford Road, now is just a sign with drive-through offers both in English and Arabic that tells that there are no halal foods available anymore. Their decision to eliminate these products from the menu after a 12- year period is caused different reactions in Dearborn city: Some clients were dissatisfied, although some mentioned that it was the right thing to do because McDonald's had issues with selling halal meals already a long time before.
Halal food was removed some years ago, after a lawsuit in 2011 that was assured that McDonald's restaurant was offering a non-halal chicken despite the fact that it wasn't a real halal meal. Muslim halal is similar to Jewish koshar, it requires that flesh should be prepared by following to Muslim guidelines, for example, the cook must say a prayer while cutting the meat. Sometimes employees of the Ford Road's McDonald's made a mistake by giving non-halal foods to customers, who wanted to have a halal meal.
An agreement of 700,000 dollars was achieved in April that divided by giving 150,000 dollars to the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, 25 thousand dollars went to a Dearborn Heights man - Ahmed Ahmed, who submitted the lawsuit against McDonald's, and $275,000 to the Muslim health center "Huda Clinic" in Detroit. The rest of the money went to lawyer fees.
McDonald's refused any misdeed in this agreement that resulted in the end of halal meals in McDonald's. But some Muslim customers were not satisfied with this agreement, they thought that compensations should have been granted to individual buyers, not Muslim organizations.
The lawyer Kassem Dakhlallah, who submitted the lawsuit against McDonald's, claimed that the decision of Mc'Donald's to stop offering halal food is frustrating. He told that McDonald's could have tried to provide that all halal foods are appropriate to their advertisements.
But, he noted, if McDonald's might not ensure that, then stopping to offer a halal food was perhaps an adequate decision for them.
Majed Moughni, a man who had resisted the negotiation, told the McDonald's decision to stop their offer of halal food was the best thing to do. After pressure from lawyers with McDonald's, his rights to free-speech were limited after Kathleen Macdonald, Judge of Wayne County district courts, held down his page on Facebook that was very crucial to the company's handling of this case. The judge Kathleen Macdonald annulled her order against Moughni when free-speech attorneys protected him afterwards.
"If you can't get it correct all the time, then you are doing a disfavor to the Muslim community," Moughni noted of the company's handling of halal meals. "Stop offering it if you can not ensure it."
McDonald's with its more than 14 thousand restaurants in the United States began offering halal foods for the first time in this country in September 2000. It was near Greenfield, at its restaurant on Michigan Avenue. It pursued with the restaurant on Ford Road. In 2000, halal version of Chicken McNuggets made about 65% of sale amounts of McNuggets at the restaurant on Michigan Avenue.
Despite McDonald's decision to stop selling halal food in the United States, it still offers halal products in Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia.