U is for what?

The Daughter knows that an R or a TM in a circle on a package means that somehow the design of the packaging has some intellectual property protection. Specifically, they mean trademarked or registered, respectively; in the United States, that’s handled by the US Patents and Trademark Office. And a C in a circle suggests copyright protection; in the US that’s a function of the Copyright Office.

But she asked me: what does that U in a circle mean on her bottle of ketchup

H is for Halal and Haram

I was watching ABC News (US) last month, and there was a piece about Air National Guard members from Illinois putting pallets of meals onto a C-130H at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. The Meals Ready to Eat would be delivered to Pakistan as part of a relief mission after the devastating floods. What I noticed is that every single box I saw was labelled, in a very large font, HALAL.

So what IS halal? The best site I’ve come across is from IFANCA, the Islamic Food and Nutitional Council of America, who defines it: “Halal is an Arabic word meaning lawful or permitted. The opposite of halal is haram, which means unlawful or prohibited.