Agreement approaching completion

Representatives of each member organisation of the NHF, including their sharia law experts, met in Cape Town on 23 May 2006 to progress the historic initiative which intends to standardise activities in the national halaal certification industry. The three members of the NHF are the Muslim Judicial Council, The Islamic Council of South Africa and the National Independent Halaal Trust.

Significantly, the parties have reached consensus on a number of important halaal standards such as slaughtering of animals at abattoirs and certification of non-meat foodstuffs.

Based on the agreement reached by the parties, the NHF will produce a set of interim uniform standards which will be referred back to the members' sharia law experts for them to add various technical certification details. In addition, a few more proposed standards remain to be discussed between the parties, who hope to finalise these within the next 30 days.

The process is now nearing completion and with more than two-thirds of the key issues having been agreed upon, the parties are confident that a final agreement on uniform halaal standards will be in place before August of this year.

The initiative between the members of the NHF is unique to the national halaal industry which is now being normalised for the first time.