Is Aussie beef halal?

Readers would do well to track down a short piece from the Al Huda Centre of Islamic Banking and Islamic Economics - which asks for the US$640b halal industry to align itself with the US$800 billion Islamic finance sector. This short article states that 'The halal industry believes that Islamic finance has long ignored its little `halal-half' brother, because it either does not understand the business model or its financing needs'.

The key question posed by this piece is - what would happen if major importers of Aussie food - such as Gulf countries were to insist on the food they import being halal? To quote the article, 'The GCC countries are major importers of billions of dollars in foods/products, projected to touch $53 billion in 2020. Now, what if large importers like Saudi Arabia or the UAE impose `their' halal certification criteria for exports from these countries, including G20 countries like Australia (red meat) and Brazil (chickens)?'

The article makes the point that although a Shari'ah compliant food-only index does not yet exist, S&P has 15 Shari'ah compliant food companies in the GCC and 123 global Shari'ah compliant food companies from China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the US and others.

The sting in the tail is the conclusion of the article which states, 'The halal industry needs to get (1) its act together on process, auditing, and certification, and get into the face of Islamic banks and better explain the (2) inter-relatedness of the sectors, (3) better explain the business model, risk and its mitigation, (4) better explain that it establishes the foundation for diversified lending, and increased investor options for Islamic banks' customers, and (5) allow Islamic finance to talk the talk of a $2-trillion `niche' market in the making!'

Wise words - which the Australian food industry might want to spend some time thinking about.