Fast-food chains serving up halal food with a side of misinformation,

Challenging and frustrating. 

That’s how Mohammad Arfan describes his experience trying to get the answers he needs before sitting down to a meal. 

As the face of In2Spices, a YouTube channel he runs with his wife, Sarah, dedicated to profiling halal restaurants, he eats out a lot — and his 13,000 followers are proof Canadians are hungry for halal options they can trust.

“You want to walk in with your friends and your family to have a nice meal … the last thing you want to be worried about is the pizza in front of me,” Arfan said. 

Walking out of restaurants because he’s not sure the halal food he’s about to enjoy meets his standards is a sad but all-too-common reality for the couple, and one that may be familiar to the almost two million Muslims across Canada.

“It happened just last week,” said Arfan.

High demand for halal, little help for consumers

Canadians are spending more than a billion dollars a year on halal food products. And an increasing number of fast-food giants are trying to cash in on that market by offering halal menu items.

But a Marketplace investigation found that some of those chains can’t answer basic questions about the halal items they’re selling, and the certification they provide as proof can’t always be trusted.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency requires any product that’s labelled, advertised or sold as halal to be certified. But consumers, including Arfan, say getting clear information about the halal items on the menu, and the restaurant’s suppliers, isn’t easy.

What’s worse, says Sarah Arfan, is when restaurants get it wrong. Misinformation about halal food they’re consuming is harmful, she said.

“At the end of the day, it affects our faith and our belief.”

Canada’s top chains put to the test

To see how well informed some of Canada’s top fast-food chains are about the halal food they’re selling, Marketplace went undercover at 10 restaurants — KFC, Popeyes, Osmow’s, Boston Pizza, and Mary Brown’s — by visiting two locations across the Greater Toronto Area for each of the chains. 

The team, which included a Muslim employee who follows a halal diet, asked a number of questions Muslim consumers and experts in the certification of halal food told Marketplace they need answered before feeling comfortable sitting down to eat.

Employees at six of the 10 spots visited told the team the entire restaurant was certified halal — in fact, not one of the 10 locations Marketplace visited is. 

“I would be very disappointed if I was the customer of that restaurant and having to find out that I am being misled,” said Imam Omar Subedar after Marketplace showed him a number of hidden camera clips.  

Subedar runs the Halal Monitoring Authority (HMA), one of Canada’s largest halal certifying agencies, and says the certification system is often…