<<If one joins the Roll Royce Owners Club don't expect the members to embrace your Model 'T' Ford.>>
If The Rolls Royce Owners Club (or indeed the Model T Owners Club) decide to only buy certified hugh octane fuel, should we obect to the certification of that?"

Yes Aidan we should as it might lead owners of early Rolls and all Model 'T's into wasteful spending for no benefit at all.

If the Jewish and Muslim certification bodies gave certification for nothing, in the interests of those of their faiths, then I can see no objection; I've cut plenty of sheep's throats and it is a very quick death and stunning is only a sop to city sensitivities.
In the field, killing for the property, there is minimal fear experienced by sheep, in fact no fear at all if they are used to being handled.
Beef I prefer to shoot with a bullet to the brain.
In either case they do not experience the fear that is apart of abattoir killing.

Aiden said;
But there's no evidence of any coercion.

Sanitarium told me that if they did not pay it they could lose their
Asian market. I suspect he meant the Indonesian market.

He did not say they were threatened.
Perhaps they were made an offer they could not refuse.

You said;It seems there's no rational case for opposing halal certification

I do not oppose the labeling.
If he was not threatened then there would be no reason to alledge extortion.

However if the manufacturer was told he would lose the market if the
product was not labelled then it sounds like a threat.
I would record the discussion and if they refused then ask why.

Somewhere in the world there will be precedent on this.

Aiden, I have just realised that as most Halal certified products are
not labelled and Sanitarium is only one case, does it mean that the
Halal organisation will have to run a publicity campaign for and
against all the products that have either accepted or rejected Halal ?

They must have explained that to Sanitarium for example.
Surely that would be prima facie extortion ?

Advertising provides useful service to the public as well as the supplier. All forms of advertising including the local phone book costs the supplier of goods and services, but it is information for all members of the public.

I like the idea suggested that an invoice be supplied to persons requiring certification. Try gluten free labeling, or free range eggs, or permeate free, or GM free, or nut free etc, etc suppose the organisations requiring these labels all required to pay fees to bear these labels.

Dear Josephus,

In Australia, it is not an offence to write "Kosher" or "Halal" on a pack of food, provided it indeed is. However, most Jews/Muslims would not accept that package unless it also has a symbol of a known certifying body, including the Rabbi who authorised it. It is obviously fraudulent to include such a symbol without authorisation.

In Israel it is an offence to place your own "kosher" mark on a product or a restaurant or food outlet: while it is not compulsory to be kosher or to state that your product/outlet is kosher, if you do state so, then certification must by law include the formal state's Rabbinate authority's (but may and often does include other Rabbis on top). What's interesting is that while the state enforces this law in most places, it does not dare to enter and enforce it within Ultra-Orthodox Haredi neighbourhoods, where they have stricter standards and only recognise their own Rabbis and not the state of Israel. Anyway, that's all crazy and fortunately we don't have such a law in Australia.

What then is the situation where it is not required that the product
be labelled, just that the money for the fee be paid ?

From a quick look around in the supermarket not many are labelled.