Halal instead of meatballs: In this school, only Islamic dietary rules are followed

Halal-certified school meals have long been part of everyday life in many Berlin schools. Numerous caterers, such as Z-Catering and Luna, offer pork-free dishes, vegetarian options, and explicitly halal menus. In Gelsenkirchen, this choice is now mandatory: At the Erle Comprehensive School, meals will be prepared exclusively according to Islamic dietary rules starting with the new school year.

The school's website states: "All meals are halal." This means that these dishes are no longer optional, but a mandatory standard. The school restaurant gGmbH, the previous provider, had already dispensed with pork, but deliberately avoided the term "halal."

The meat comes exclusively from ritually prescribed slaughters

As the Nius portal reports, the new caterer Mutti's Küche now supplies nine schools in Gelsenkirchen, including the Ricarda-Huch-Gymnasium, the Max-Planck-Gymnasium, and the Grillo-Gymnasium. All food, from the salad bar to the pasta dishes, is halal-certified.

Traditional dishes such as currywurst, Leberkäse (meatloaf), and smoked pork have thus completely disappeared from the menu. The meat used comes exclusively from ritually prescribed slaughter. In Islamic religious law, the term "halal"—literally "permissible"—covers everything permitted to devout Muslims. Forbidden or haram include pork, alcohol, blood, and meat from non-ritually slaughtered animals.

The decision to implement the new catering concept reflects the demographic development in Gelsenkirchen: Around 60 percent of students have a migration background, and in some districts the proportion is significantly higher. The city's food advisory board had already decided in 2010 to ban pork from all schools. The current complete switch to halal-certified food represents a logical further development of this approach.

The measure can be seen as an adaptation to the needs of an increasingly diverse student body, particularly with regard to religious dietary requirements. According to Nius, the school administration already announced the change in May.