The Obama administration removed all pork meats from the national prison menu. The federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs 122 federal penitentiaries and provides three meals a day to 206,000 inmates, instituted the pork ban and the ban on nonhalal meats at the beginning of this fiscal year because pork is expensive, and a survey found that inmates don’t like the taste of the “other white meat the Washington post reported.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) welcomed the change because it accommodates Muslim inmates, but the groups spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said he hopes, “its not an indication of an increasing number of Muslims in the prison system.”
Not everyone is behind the move by federal prisons to ban pork.
Non-pork options have long been available to observant Jews and Muslims, who can’t eat pork products for religious reasons.
The nation’s 206,000 federal prisoners still can buy packaged pork rinds and pre-cooked bacon in the prison commissary.