Every so often a post goes around claiming that halaal certification is a hidden tax on everyone’s groceries, or that the fees fund something other than the certifying body. Both claims have been examined by people with the power to look at the books. This is what they found, and what the certification industry is actually worth to South Africa.

Who Pays, and What For

Halaal certification is a service a business chooses and pays for. A certifying body sends trained inspectors to check ingredients, suppliers and premises, and keeps checking with regular audits; if the business meets the standard, it may display the certifier’s logo. In South Africa the main bodies are SANHA, NIHT and the MJC Halaal Trust.

It works like the other labels on a South African shelf. Vegan, kosher, gluten-free and GMO-free certification all follow the same pattern: a business volunteers for an independent check so that customers who need the assurance can trust the label, and pays for the privilege. Many products carry several at once. Nobody argues that a gluten-free logo is a hidden tax.

What the fees cover is on the record. At a seminar convened by the CRL Rights Commission on 22 November 2018 — called after the Commission received complaints, reported as coming largely from Christian consumers, about how many retail products carry halaal certification — SANHA’s halaal certification office manager, Mufti Mohammed Yusuf Seedat, explained that the fees paid by manufacturers and retailers are used solely for SANHA’s own work: staff, inspections, travel, training, and the running costs of certifying — not for religious or political causes.

Does It Make Food More Expensive?

The most thorough public examination of this question was not held in South Africa. In 2015 the Australian Senate’s Economics References Committee ran a full inquiry into third-party certification of food, after the same claims had spread there. Its report was released on 1 December 2015.

It is worth being precise about what the committee said, because the summary that circulates is stronger than the finding. The evidence put before it, the committee wrote, “overwhelmingly suggests that halal certification does not result in increased food prices”. But its own conclusion was more cautious: that “insufficient evidence exists to determine the effect of third party certification of food on supermarket prices”. None of the report’s seven recommendations concerns price.

So the honest statement is this: no inquiry has found that certification raises food prices, and the evidence gathered by the one body that went looking pointed firmly the other way — but that body stopped short of a formal finding. Anyone who tells you the Senate proved there is no effect is overstating it, in the same way as anyone who tells you there is a halaal tax.

The underlying logic is simple enough. The fee is a business service cost spread across everything the business sells, and a business that is free to cancel will not keep paying for something that costs it customers. Certification is sought because it opens markets, not because anyone is compelled.

Does the Money Fund Terrorism?

Here the same inquiry is firmer. Submitters put the claim to the committee directly. Australia’s financial intelligence agency, AUSTRAC, told it that it “has no information that indicates halal certification is linked to terrorism”. The Australian Crime Commission said no direct link between halal certification in Australia and the funding of terrorism had been found, while noting that any sector moving large sums carries a risk of exploitation. The committee recorded that it “did not receive any evidence supporting this view”, and deferred to the agencies at the forefront of the country’s counter-terrorism and anti-money-laundering work.

Two honest qualifications. That finding is scoped to Australia, and it is a record of no evidence found rather than a proof that none could exist. What can be said without qualification is that the claim has been put to agencies with the power to investigate it, and they have reported finding nothing.

In South Africa the equivalent moment was the 2018 CRL seminar described above. The Commission hosted the discussion; it did not publish a finding of its own, and none has been located. What is on the record is SANHA’s own account of where the fees go, given in a public forum convened precisely because people had asked.

What the Country Gains

A market South African producers can reach. The State of the Global Islamic Economy Report 2025/26, published by DinarStandard with Salaam Gateway, puts global Muslim consumer spending on halal food and beverage at about US$1.53 trillion in 2024, projected to reach about US$2.06 trillion by 2029. Certification is the entry ticket. (The figure is for food and drink specifically, not for the whole Islamic economy, which is several times larger once Islamic finance assets are counted — the two are often confused.)

Exports that were closed. In August 2023 Saudi Arabia lifted a 21-year ban on South African red meat. Before it did, officials of the Saudi Food and Drug Authority visited South African abattoirs and feedlots to verify compliance with Saudi market access protocols and halaal certification. By August 2024 the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition reported that the Saudi authority had approved twelve South African companies to export beef and related products and seven for lamb, mutton and related products. The certification infrastructure was part of what made that possible.

Certificates other countries accept. All three South African bodies — SANHA, NIHT and the MJC Halaal Trust — appear on the gazetted list of Recognised Foreign Halal Certification Bodies maintained by JAKIM, Malaysia’s Department of Islamic Development, in the edition effective 21 August 2026. A South African certificate is accepted there. Recognition on that list is at organisation level; for meat and poultry, establishments must separately be inspected and approved by JAKIM and Malaysia’s Department of Veterinary Services.

Work, here. Certified products are made, packed, sold and exported by South African workers, and provincial agencies treat halaal as a growth sector. The figures that circulate should be handled carefully, because they are estimates and projections rather than measured statistics. In August 2017 Wesgro released research to help Cape businesses enter the halal market, and the then Western Cape Minister of Economic Opportunities, Alan Winde, said the province’s halal businesses could create 32 000 jobs by maximising their reach into that market — a statement of potential, with no timeframe or methodology published. Reporting on a June 2025 halaal export workshop run by Trade and Investment KwaZulu-Natal with SANHA, the Sunday Tribune put the national halaal industry at an estimated R45 billion and said about 12 000 jobs had been created in KwaZulu-Natal over three years through halaal manufacturing and related services; those figures are unattributed press estimates, and no agency publication setting out their basis could be found.

What the Numbers Do and Do Not Show

SAMNET would rather publish a smaller claim that holds than a larger one that collapses the first time somebody checks. So, plainly: the export facts are solid and come from government sources. The global market figure comes from the industry’s own annual report and is credible as such. The jobs numbers are estimates, one of them a nine-year-old projection and the other unattributed, and they should be quoted as estimates or not at all.

What does not require an estimate is the shape of the thing. Certification is voluntary, paid by the business that wants it, audited, and the entry requirement for markets South African farmers and manufacturers would otherwise be shut out of. It is a South African export advantage that happens to be built by a religious minority, and the country is better off for having it.

Sources

  • Senate Economics References Committee, Parliament of Australia, Third party certification of food, released 1 December 2015 — price at paragraphs 3.23 and 3.26; terrorism financing at paragraphs 3.42 to 3.47.
  • News24, 22 November 2018, report of the CRL Rights Commission seminar on food certification.
  • DinarStandard with Salaam Gateway, State of the Global Islamic Economy Report 2025/26.
  • SAnews (South African Government News Agency), 21 and 22 August 2024, on the dtic selling mission to Saudi Arabia and the lifting of the red meat ban.
  • JAKIM, Recognised Foreign Halal Certification Bodies & Authorities, effective 21 August 2026.
  • Wesgro media release, 1 August 2017.
  • Sunday Tribune, 18 June 2025, on the TIKZN and SANHA halaal export workshop.

Disclosure

This article draws on material published by HeyHalaal, a South African halaal directory and guide site with which SAMNET has a working relationship. Every factual claim above was checked against its original source rather than taken from that summary, and where the two differ — as they do on the Australian Senate’s conclusion about food prices — the original governs.

Published by the South African Muslim Network as part of its work explaining Muslim practice to anyone who wants to understand it.