Prof. Abbas Shouman, President of the World Organization for al-Azhar Graduates and Secretary General of al-Azhar Council of Senior Scholars, stressed that eating cultured meat is not permitted, except under the following three conditions: first, taking a cell from an animal slaughtered according to the Islamic Shari’a and not to be taken from a living animal or a non-slaughtered dead animal, unless it is a fish or Locust. Second, the nutrition of the cultured cell should be free from filthy things such as spilt blood. Third, the cultured meat should be proven harmless to human health.
In such vein, Prof. Shouman indicated that as long as these conditions are hard to be achieved, there should be no rush in the expansion of culturing meat before confirming its safety on human health as well as applying the lawful and health controls. This came in His Eminence’s research paper presented during the seminar organized by The International Islamic Fiqh Academy (IIFA), a subsidiary organ of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Jeddah. The seminar was organized under the title of “The Ruling on Eating Meat Cultured from Animals, Genetically Modified Foods and Insects”, where it was affirmed that what has been tackled during the seminar agrees with what is endorsed by al-Azhar Council of Senior Scholars.
