What is jallalah meat?
Jallalah meat comes from a halal animal that mostly feeds on filth, such as dung or garbage, until its meat, milk or eggs change in smell or taste. The Prophet ﷺ forbade eating it. It becomes fine again once the animal is kept on clean food for a while.
What "jallalah" means
The word comes from the Arabic jallah, meaning dung. A jallalah animal is a normally halal animal, like a chicken, cow, sheep, goat or camel, whose main diet is impure matter. The classic example is a chicken that roams a rubbish heap and lives on waste. Ibn Umar reported that the Prophet ﷺ forbade eating jallalah and drinking its milk (Sunan Abi Dawud 3785).
This fits the Quran's description of the Prophet ﷺ:
Is it haram or just disliked?
Scholars differ:
- Hanafi and Shafi'i: mostly disliked (makruh) when the meat has clearly changed in smell or taste.
- Hanbali: haram in the well-known view, until the animal is cleansed.
- Maliki: generally permitted, though some dislike it.
What they agree on is the key factor: whether filth is the animal's main food and whether the effect shows in the meat. A chicken that pecks at something dirty now and then is not jallalah.
How it becomes halal again
The solution is quarantine: keep the animal away from filth and feed it clean food for a period before slaughter. Early scholars, based on reports from the Companions, mentioned about three days for chickens and longer, up to forty days, for larger animals like camels and cows. Once the smell and taste are gone, the meat is fine.
What about modern farm animals?
Most commercial feed today is grain, soy and vegetables, so ordinary farm animals are not jallalah. Some scholars have raised concerns about feed that contains animal by-products or blood meal; most say that if this isn't the main diet and the meat is normal, it doesn't make the animal jallalah. For everyday shopping, the bigger question is usually the slaughter, not the feed. See Is supermarket meat halal? and Is all chicken halal?
If you keep your own backyard chickens, give them proper feed and keep them away from waste. For a general overview, see What can Muslims eat?
- Jallalah is a halal animal that mainly eats filth.
- The Prophet ﷺ forbade its meat and milk.
- Scholars differ on haram vs disliked.
- Feeding it clean food for a while makes it halal again.
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