After several cases involving mislabeled halal goods, Virginia is considering legislation that would make selling halal knockoffs a misdemeanor punishable by fines.

This year, Farhat went to Lambco, a new slaughterhouse in New Windsor, Md., that caters largely to Muslims. He picked out a white boar goat from Lambco's pen. Slaughterhouse owner Joe Cavanaugh handed him a knife. Then Lambco assistant Frankie Williams carried the squirming goat inside, and Farhat pinned it under his knee in the pristine, almost clinical, room.

"Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar," he whispered, the words of the Takbir prayer. "Allah is the greatest."

Modern but traditional



In the booming ethnic slaughter industry, Lambco is a place where modern and traditional meet. Upscale retailers from Washington use the facility to slaughter lambs and goats using a Western technique: stunning animals with a captive bolt gun before they're slaughtered.

But when the retailers leave, Lambco becomes the stage for sacrifice and slaughter rituals from around the world -- practices the federal government exempted from the Humane Slaughter Act in 1958 at the request of immigrants.

"As long as it's humane, we allow the customer to do whatever their tradition and religion dictate," Cavanaugh said, bending down to pick up a piece of goat intestine. "We just clean up afterwards."

After the goat was slaughtered and butchered, Farhat's son, Ali, 14, carried the meat to the family's minivan.

"It's been a good day," Syed Farhat said, walking away from the slaughterhouse. "We know for sure that this meat is halal. We know that this was done right."