Purifying an Animal Fed on Filth

Having said all this, there are some very important points to keep in mind for anyone who is ever going to live on a farm or in a rural area, or to keep some domestic animals as pets in the backyard. Firstly: if for any reason a camel, or cattle — a cow or a bull — a sheep, a goat, or chickens eat only their own droppings, their faeces, or the droppings of other animals, they go mad; and then, the sharīʿah says, if a person were to slaughter them or milk them, even having said Bismillāhi'r-Raḥmāni'r-Raḥīm over them in doing so, it is ḥarām to eat of them, because their food is najis, impure, and it therefore affects everything within them. For such animals to become ḥalāl again, Islam does not simply shut them away: Islam says there is a solution. The solution is that they must be kept in an enclosed area, an enclosure, and their feed controlled, ḥalāl, permissible feed being given to them; and depending on the animal, after a certain period they all become ḥalāl again. Islamic law says, for example, that for a camel to become clean of the jīfah it eats, the lāshah it eats, the filth it eats, it must be put into captivity, in a controlled environment, for forty days; after forty days a person may begin to use it — to milk the camel — and, if it is slaughtered, to eat the meat. Cattle — a bull, a cow, a bullock — twenty days.

So for anyone wishing to make qurbān, labihat,^*** for ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā, the advice of the elders is this: if the person the cattle is bought from is known, well and good — it may be bought the day before, or even on the same day. But if he is not known, it is better to bring the camel, or the cow, whatever animal is to be slaughtered, into one's own backyard and put it through this process of cleansing, so that the sacrificial animal — the udhiyah, the riha, the qurbān, the sacrifice to be made — becomes pure and ḥalāl. For a sheep or a goat, ten days.

A question was put here. There are certain animal rights organisations which, in order to stop the live export of Australian beef overseas — such a cruelty to the sheep when they travel — have fed the fodder, the cattle's food, tainted with pig's blood, and the animals have eaten it, so to speak, without knowing; this is what happens to those animals. The same thing applies. The Muslims, when they receive such animals, on their side need to put them through this process of twenty days of pure feeding, and the animal becomes clean; for a sheep or a goat, ten days. For any type of poultry or fowl on the farm — chickens, geese, ducks, and the rest — three days; and for the little birds, such as sparrows, quails and pigeons, one day, because after one day their digestive system is so quick that everything comes out anyway. Everything comes out — as anyone standing where the pigeons are can soon see. This is an area to keep in mind, for otherwise it is ḥarām to consume their meat or drink their milk. And where there is doubt — where the animal eats both, the good feed as well as the najis feed — what then? If the opinion dominant in the heart is that the animal eats properly, though every now and then it helps itself, from an old habit, to some jīfah, then in that case its meat as well as its milk remains permissible to consume.