In February 2005, His Majesty the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam and Australian Prime Minister John Howard agreed to examine ways in which Australia and Brunei could develop a high quality, halal export industry that would seek to combine Australia's reputation as a producer of fresh, high quality food products with the Sultanate's stringent halal certification standards.

This was stated by Dr Geoffrey W Smithers from Australia who presented his talk on "Food Science Australia - A Unique Research Resource In The Asia-Pacific Region" during yesterday's seminar at the ICC.

He explained that Food Science Australia represents a 'resource' to assist companies and both governments meet this objective quickly through process-product-and-ingredient development.

Meanwhile, Dr Abd Elaziem Farouk Gad, a professor from the Department of Biotechnology Engineering, International Islamic University in Malaysia, talked about the link between eating pork and suffering from health problems such as inflammation of the appendix and gall bladder and acute intestinal catarrh.

The professor, who was delivering his talk on "Holistic Molecular Based Detection Approach for Haram Assurance In Food", added that eating pork could also cause high stress levels, as well as emit toxins and poisons into the human body.

Citing what Dr Hans-Heinrich Reckeweg, a German physician, wrote concerning those who eat pork, Dr Abd Elaziem Farouk Gad said, "The population which observes the Islamic laws is healthy, while those who follow the habits of western civilisation manifest all the typical diseases which come with the consumption of pork."

Meanwhile, Mr Shahlan Hairalah from Singapore delivered a talk entitled "What Halal Consumers Want: A Feedback", where he talked about real-life questions asked by customers in the Singapore halal market.

One of the interesting questions that was brought up was, "Would a cake with an image of 'Piglet' (a character from the "Winnie the Pooh" cartoon) still be considered halal?"

Dr Tipayanate Ariyapitipun from the Halal Services Centre of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok pointed out that a monitoring system has to be in place to ensure that foods are not contaminated with other 'haram' products.

Lastly, Mr Ir Marco Tieman from Malaysia delivered a talk on "Effective Halal Supply Chains".

Monday, 20th August 2007. Borneo Bulletin.