What is halal food?
What the word means, what makes meat halal, what Canadian law actually requires of a halal claim, and the part the law leaves to you.
The short answer
Halal is an Arabic word meaning permissible. Applied to food, it describes what a Muslim is permitted to eat and drink. Its opposite is haram — forbidden.
Most food is halal by default. Fruit, vegetables, grains, seafood, dairy — none of it raises a question. In practice the questions almost always come down to three things: meat, alcohol, and ingredients derived from animals, such as gelatin, rennet and some emulsifiers.
What makes meat halal
Broadly, and with the caveat below: the animal must be of a permitted species, healthy at the time of slaughter, slaughtered by a Muslim who invokes the name of God, and drained of blood. Pork is excluded outright, as is meat from an animal that died before slaughter.
Beyond that, practice genuinely differs — most visibly on whether stunning before slaughter is acceptable, and on machine slaughter of poultry. Different certifying bodies apply different standards. That is why two products can both be legitimately certified halal and still not satisfy the same person, and it is why we don't adjudicate between them — the Government of Canada reached the same conclusion when it declined to write a national halal standard, naming this exact disagreement as the reason. The Halal Monitoring Authority is one Canadian certifier whose standards are published in detail if you want to see what one body's rules look like in full.
What Canadian law actually requires
This is the part most explanations skip, and it is the most useful thing on this page.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency does not certify food as halal, and it does not define what halal means. No government body in Canada does. What Canadian law requires instead is disclosure.
Under section B.01.050 of the Food and Drug Regulations, food that is labelled or advertised as halal must also carry the name of the person or body that certified it. The rule does not say what standard that body must apply. It says you must be told who they are, so you can judge for yourself.
That is a genuinely useful thing to know when you are standing in a shop: "halal" on a package with no certifier named is not what the regulation contemplates. "Halal — certified by [named body]" is, and it gives you something you can actually look up.
Why disclosure, and not a standard?
The government set out its reasoning when the rule was made. Regulating halal through a single national standard was judged "not feasible as there is currently no consensus among stakeholders on a common standard" — and the analysis names mechanical versus manual slaughter as the example of that disagreement.
So rather than define halal, the CFIA requires that you be told who did. It states plainly that it "will not assess or determine the suitability of the criteria used to certify the food product as halal."
Canada regulates the disclosure, not the standard. Certifying bodies are not accredited or vetted by the government, and two of them may legitimately apply different rules — which is exactly why the name on the label is the useful part. The rule was registered in April 2014 and came into force in April 2016.
And the part the law leaves to you
B.01.050 governs how a halal claim is made on labels and in advertising. It is a disclosure rule, not a kitchen inspection. Nobody from the government is checking a restaurant's supplier, and no licence is required to describe a kitchen as halal.
So for a restaurant meal, the practical answer comes down to three questions:
- What does the restaurant itself say? Most will tell you plainly, and many display a certificate.
- Who certifies it, if anyone? Some kitchens are certified by a body; others source certified meat without being certified themselves. Both are common.
- Is the whole kitchen halal, or only part of the menu? This is the one people most often assume rather than ask.
Whole menu, or selected items
Some kitchens are entirely halal. Others serve halal meat alongside non-halal items, or serve alcohol. Neither arrangement is unusual and neither is hidden — but they are different, and the difference matters to different people.
It is why every restaurant on Halal Food Pass states which one it is, and why a listing that is only partly halal is labelled "Partially halal menu" rather than left to look like the other kind. What we check, what the restaurant declares, and what our labels mean is set out in full on how Halal information works.
We are not a certification authority, and we don't present ourselves as one. Every halal claim on a listing is the restaurant's own, attributed to them and dated.
What about specific chains?
"Is [chain] halal?" is the most common version of this question, and the answer is usually more complicated than yes or no — it often varies by location, by supplier, and by which items you order. We check Canadian chains one at a time, publish what their own documentation says, and cite the source and the date we read it, including the cases where the honest answer is that the company has not published a position.
Browse the chain-by-chain checks →
Finding halal restaurants near you
Once the question is settled, the practical one is where to eat. Every restaurant we list carries its halal status, its hours, its address and whatever offer is live right now.
Browse every restaurant we list · by cuisine · in Mississauga · Ridgeway Plaza · near UTM · during Ramadan
Common questions
What is halal food?
Halal is an Arabic word meaning permissible. Applied to food, it describes what a Muslim is permitted to eat and drink. Most food is halal by default — fruit, vegetables, grains, seafood, dairy. The questions almost always concern meat, alcohol, and ingredients derived from animals, such as gelatin and some emulsifiers.
What country is halal food from?
No country, because halal is not a cuisine. It is a religious category describing what is permitted, so any cuisine can be halal or not depending on how it is sourced and prepared. The association with Middle Eastern and South Asian food is a matter of who opened the restaurants, not of what the word means. Halal burgers, sushi, Chinese, Italian, Mexican and Caribbean kitchens all exist, and several of them are listed on this site.
What makes meat halal?
Broadly: the animal must be of a permitted species, healthy at the time of slaughter, slaughtered by a Muslim who invokes the name of God, and drained of blood. Beyond that, practice genuinely differs — most visibly on whether stunning before slaughter is acceptable, and on machine slaughter of poultry. Certifying bodies apply different standards, which is why two products can both be certified and still not satisfy the same person.
Why is pork haram?
Pork is prohibited in the Qur'an, which names it directly in four places (2:173, 5:3, 6:145 and 16:115), alongside carrion and blood. It is one of the few food prohibitions stated that explicitly, which is why it is treated as settled rather than debated. As to why: the primary answer given by scholars is that it is a command to be followed. Explanations offered beyond that, of which health-based ones are the most commonly repeated, are generally regarded as secondary rather than the basis of the ruling. Halal Food Pass is not a religious authority, and for the reasoning behind any ruling your own scholar is the right source.
Is beef gelatin halal?
It depends on the source, and on whose ruling you follow. Gelatin is made from animal collagen. Pork-derived gelatin is not halal. Beef gelatin from an animal slaughtered according to halal requirements is generally accepted. The disagreement is about beef gelatin from an animal that was not: some hold that the processing transforms it into a different substance and permits it, others hold that it does not. Halal Food Pass does not rule on this, and no Canadian authority does either. In practice a label rarely names the source, so a certifier you trust is the only reliable answer, which is exactly what the Canadian labelling rule is designed to give you.
Can Muslims eat kosher food?
Kosher and halal overlap, but they are not the same thing, and Muslims differ on this. Both prohibit pork and both require ritual slaughter, which is why kosher products are sometimes used as a fallback where nothing halal-certified is available. Two differences matter most: alcohol, which can be kosher but is not halal, and the invocation made at slaughter. Some scholars permit kosher meat for Muslims and others do not, and Halal Food Pass does not rule on it. The practical point is that kosher certification does not check for alcohol, so a kosher label on its own does not answer the halal question. Canadian labelling rules treat the two the same way: the certifying body must be named, and the government defines neither standard.
Does the Canadian government certify halal food?
No. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency does not certify food as halal, does not define what halal means, and has said it will not assess the criteria a certifier uses. What Canadian law requires is disclosure: under section B.01.050 of the Food and Drug Regulations, in force since April 2016, food labelled or advertised as halal must also carry the name of the person or body that certified it. The government declined to set a single national standard because there is no consensus on one.
Does that law cover restaurants?
It governs how a halal claim is made on food labels and in advertising, and it requires that the certifier be named. It is a disclosure rule rather than a kitchen inspection, so for a restaurant meal the practical answer still comes down to what the restaurant states, who certifies it if anyone does, and whether the whole kitchen or only some dishes are halal.
Is halal meat more expensive?
Sometimes, and the reasons are practical rather than religious. Halal certification is a paid third-party audit, so a certified supply chain carries a cost an uncertified one does not, and halal supply chains are often smaller, which removes some economies of scale. At the counter the difference varies by product, retailer and city, and it is frequently nil. We do not publish price comparisons, and we would not trust a single figure claiming to cover the whole category.
Is the whole menu halal, or only some dishes?
It varies, and it matters. Some kitchens are entirely halal. Others serve halal meat alongside non-halal items, or serve alcohol. Neither arrangement is unusual and neither is hidden — but they are different, so it is worth asking which one you are in rather than assuming.
Sources
- Canadian Food Inspection Agency — Method of production claims, retrieved 11 August 2026. The requirement to name the certifying body, and the CFIA's own statement that it does not certify or define halal.
- Canada Gazette, Part II — Regulations Amending the Food and Drug Regulations (Halal food), SOR/2014-76, retrieved 11 August 2026. The amendment that introduced the halal provision, registered 4 April 2014 and in force 4 April 2016. Its Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement is the source for the quoted passages on why no national standard was set and on the CFIA declining to assess certifiers' criteria.
- Halal Monitoring Authority (Canada), retrieved 11 August 2026. Cited as an example of a Canadian certifier that publishes its standards; Halal Food Pass is not affiliated with HMA and does not endorse one certifier over another.
This page explains a subject; it is not religious guidance. Where a question of practice matters to you, your own scholar or certifier is the authority, not us.
Related: How Halal information works · Is it halal? Chain-by-chain checks · Member FAQ · About Halal Food Pass
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