Other Aspects of Haram-Halal

Hendra Utama's handwriting was unmistakable on the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) audit document from a slaughterhouse in Rockhampton, Australia, 600 kilometers north of Brisbane. The delegation from the MUI's Food, Medicine and Cosmetics Monitoring Agency (LPPOM) had discovered that the cattle owned by Jose Batista Sobrinho (JBS) Australia, a branch of the largest food processing company in the world, had not been slaughtered in the halal way, or according to Muslim standards of permissibility.

According to Hendra, even though the practice of knocking cattle unconscious before killing them conformed to the rules, there were no checks to ensure that the bovines were still alive at the time of their slaughter. That was crucial, because if bovines die before the slaughter, their meat becomes haram, or forbidden. Strangely enough, in the conclusion of the sample audit from the 10 JBS-owned slaughterhouses, Hendra wrote, "Indonesia will encourage the AHFS to provide a halal certificate to all the JBS abbattoirs that supply cow head skin for Gelita."