As incomes rise in the Islamic world and Muslims migrate increasingly to Europe and the United States, Wangen’s halal production is part of a thrust by Nestlé to carve a niche in the global market for halal products, including coffee, baked goods, breakfast cereals and baby food. Halal products now account for $5 billion of Nestlé’s global sales. But while Switzerland benefits from factories like this one selling its products to Muslim customers in many countries, it appears the Swiss are adamantly opposed to the construction of more minarets like the one down the street.

By 2050, Europe will be unrecognizable. Instead of romantic cafes, Paris's Boulevard Saint-Germain will be lined with halal butcheries and hookah bars; the street signs in Berlin will be written in Turkish. School-children from Oslo to Naples will read Quranic verses in class, and women will be veiled.

At least, that's what the authors of the strange new genre of "Eurabia" literature want you to believe. Not all books of this alarmist Europe-is-dying category, which received its most intellectually hefty treatment yet with the recent release of Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, offer such dire and colorful predictions. But they all make the case that low fertility rates among natives, massive immigration from Muslim countries, and the fateful encounter between an assertive Islamic culture and a self-effacing European one will lead to a Europe devoid of all Western identity.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The business of selling food that is halal, or acceptable to Muslims, is set to grow rapidly in Europe in coming years as more supermarket chains target the sector, a Nestle executive said on Tuesday. Frits van Dijk, executive vice president at the world's biggest food group, told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Halal Forum in The Hague he expected the halal food business in Europe to grow by 20 to 25 percent within the next decade.