Halal Meat and Australian Food Grocery Council

Australian Food Grocery Council: But producers only need to label meat as halal if they're claiming it is halal, since there no safety issue with people unwittingly eating halal meat, according to Nine News Australia. The inquiry heard the hindquarters of cow and lamb killed according to Jewish law in Australia are also being sold unlabelled in supermarkets. Halal meat for export, prepared according to Islamic law, is typically produced in separate facilities from non-halal products but anecdotal evidence suggests they occasionally need to plug shortfalls for the domestic market."For sure there probably some halal meat that getting onto the market," Australian Food and Grocery Council director Chris Preston told the inquiry into food labelling in Canberra on Friday. Kosher Australia rabbinic administrator Rabbi Mordechai Gutnick said labelling the meat would be costly. Administrator Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, of the Kashrut Authority which supervises kosher food services, said labelling meat sold to the general public as kosher would lead to "hysteria" from people who don't understand and unnecessary economic backlash. Given there were only three kosher abattoirs slaughtering about 500 cows and 1000 lamb a week "we're talking about really negligible numbers". Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who initiated the inquiry, said some consumers might have ethical concerns about how the animal is slaughtered or "prayers being said over it" and had a right to know if their meat was halal or kosher."I can only imagine the outcry if it was a priest there with holy water," he said. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.