A national policy is needed to determine what constitutes halal meat, according to trading standards bosses.

Graham Hebblethwaite, West Yorkshire Trading Standards divisional manager, called for representatives from businesses, religious leaders, members of the Food Standards Agency and meat hygiene to address the issue and come to a solution.

"We face a lot of difficulties at the moment with what is accepted and what is not," he said at a meeting in Bradford.

"We prosecute in circumstances where meat is clearly not being killed in accordance to Islamic laws. The difficulty is when people say stunning is not allowed and yet it is done by a lot of slaughter-houses."

Stunning involves giving the animal or chicken an electric shock to desensitise it. Some say this practise is haram (forbidden) with others saying it is makroo (accepted but disliked).

Mr Hebblethwaite admitted determining what was halal was confusing. "It's not getting sorted in Bradford, there is too much confusion," he said.

"We can and do prosecute when there are clear breaches, say if meat contains pork.

"But out of the slaughterhouses in Bradford most use stunning and it is deemed to be okay as long as stunning does not kill the animal."

Basharat Feroz, a former butcher, said he was willing to set up a business and label his meat "unstunned" rather than halal. "Too many people are hi-jacking businesses by saying they are not halal. We need better labelling," he said.

Ghulam Rasul, chairman of the halal meat committee at the Council for Mosques, said that people in Bradford were able to buy non-stunned meat.

"I welcome anything which will clarify the situation. We are being told that we have to accept stunned meat because that's how businesses operate," he said.

"But having said that there are businesses which do not use stunning and they are very popular."