The ORA and ECAJ submission

Thanks to Galus Australis we can now read the submission of ORA and ECAJ to the Food Labelling Review (here).

Kosherman comments:
Having had a quick read of the submission it seems to confirm that ORA wants to be the "posek acharon" in deciding who can and who cannot offer Kosher supervision in Australia.

Seeing that quite a few of ORA's members are themselves employed in the Kashrut supervision industry (eg, Rabbi Y Sprung, Rabbis Moshe and Mordechai Gutnick, Rabbi Yanky Barber), aren't we expecting too much from them to vote for approval of new competitors?

As far as I know, the only organization mentioned in the submission whose rabbis are not members of ORA are from Adass. (Anyone know if Rabbi M Rabi and Rabbi S Silberberg are ORA members? And if not, how can they assure themselves of getting fair treatment?)

I had asked "Did ORA in their submission demand that fraudulent terms like “Kosher-style” and “Kosher-friendly” be proscribed? If not, why not?"

Reading the submission I found nothing about this. One may have thought that eliminating the use of such blatant deceitful terms would have been of major concern for our rabbis (and indeed for the lawyers on the ECAJ). Looks like we were wrong.

I am still puzzled on why there was there no public consultation with the main stakeholders, ie, Kosher consumers? Another concern expressed by commentators on GA is why were details only released to the public after the closing date for submissions?

Let’s hope that ORA and ECAJ will try and clear things up for us.