A popular European chocolate is being yanked from shelves in parts of the West Bank because of the presence of alcohol in the chocolate, which is forbidden by Islam, according to the Arabic media.
Ibrahim Al-Qadi, the acting general director of the Palestinian Authority’s Department of Consumer Protection, said Kinder chocolates have been removed from stores after an inspection of the chocolates revealed that they contained 0.8% alcohol, according to the Arabic-language news site Al Quds Al Arabi.
According to Islam this is forbidden, and it was the company's responsibility to take that into account, Al-Qadi said, according to the news outlet. The news about Kinder was also reported by Palestinian news site pal24.net and by Khaberni, a Jordanian news site.
A spokesman for Kinder told Al Bawaba that the company was "surprised" by the reports that the chocolate was being banned in the West Bank. "Our approved partner in Palestine sells only the following Kinder products: Kinder Joy, Kinder Chocolate, Kinder Chocolate Maxi, Kinder Bueno, Kinder Bueno White, Kinder Country, which do not contain any alcohol," said the spokesman, Georgina Colling.
Colling said the company was "investigating the present case through our local distributor."
A different Kinder product -- the Kinder Surprise egg -- has been banned in the United States for decades because the chocolate egg contains a toy inside, which violates a Depression-era law forbidding foods with "non-nutritive" objects embedded inside.
In 2012, a study by a French research firm revealed that many popular soft drinks contain trace amounts of alcohol, causing debate among some Muslims about whether they would be able to continue drinking soda.
-Hunter Stuart
