We built
What Our
Communities Needed.
Projected Capacity at full operation:
40 cattle per week
150 lambs or goats per week
1 Million pounds of meat annually
Five Pillars Butchery was founded by a Muslim family who moved to Maine and discovered what so many Muslim families across New England already knew: finding halal meat you could genuinely trust was harder than it should be.
The region had strong agriculture and growing Muslim communities, but it lacked infrastructure for a local, transparent, USDA-inspected halal processing operation built to serve families, farms, and institutions together.
So we built one.
Why Five Pillars Butchery Exists
When our family arrived in Maine, we assumed finding halal meat would be straightforward. Maine is a state based on agriculture; farms are plentiful. What we found instead was a supply chain that didn’t serve us. Most halal meat in New England is shipped from processing facilities hundreds of miles away, and the meat is often processed under conditions that don’t align with traditional Islamic standards. Certification oversight varied, and options were limited. Families, like ours, were forced to make do.
The experience became a question: what would it take to build something better?
The answer: Five Pillars Butchery.
We started by learning the land and building relationships with Maine farmers who were already raising livestock thoughtfully and humanely, but had no pathway to halal markets. We studied what authentic halal processing requires. We worked with Islamic scholars and food systems experts. And we began building the infrastructure that would eventually become a 5,400-square-foot USDA-inspected halal slaughter and processing facility in rural Unity, Maine.
This is not a side project. It is a full commitment to the Muslim families and consumers who need food they can trust, to the farmers who deserve new markets, and to the institutions that are ready to serve diverse communities but lack the right supply partner.
What We’re Building
A regional halal food system
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Muslim Families
Retail cuts, seasonal offerings, and whole/half-animal shares.
Qurbani and Aqeeqah services.
Transparent sourcing from farms you can learn about by name.
Halal you can verify, not just trust.
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Local Farms & Producers
A trusted halal processing partner.
Access to cooperative supply chain infrastructure.
Connections to institutional buyers who need consistent, contract-ready supply.
A regional brand worth being part of.
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Institutions
Schools, hospitals, universities, retirement communities, and food service programs across New England.
Institutional-scale halal supply with compliance documentation, custom cuts, and a free Recipe Toolkit designed for food service operations.
Impact to Date
What we’ve done so far.
We are in active development and are already making an impact.
1,700+ students reached through our Halal Meal Hub initiative with Maine schools
Recipe testing and school lunch program partnerships underway
USDA-inspected facility in development (one of the first of its scale in New England)
Regional livestock producer cooperative in formation
Partnerships with local farms, food systems organizations, and institutional buyers established
This is the early chapter of a longer story. We’re building infrastructure that will serve this region for decades. We’d love to have you be a part of it.