An article attempting to explain what halal certification means to Bega’s largest company created the largest response the BDN’s website and Facebook page has ever seen.

While we realised there was some anti-halal sentiment in the wider Australian community – the reason we looked into the story in the first place – we didn’t realise it would become so vehement and directed at the paper.

Some commenters seemed to even believe it was us with the halal product, as we were accused of supporting terrorists and had others saying they will never buy our cheese again.

Do people really think we are one and the same? That Bega means cheese only and not a regional town in NSW?!

I may be biased, but I don’t think any of our news articles are cheesy are they?!

There was also plenty of feedback – and fightback – over my decision to remove a reader poll from the same article.

The question we asked was whether halal certification affects your purchasing choices.

I would never begrudge anyone’s right to freedom of expression, but a poll to gauge the opinions of BDN readers is purely that – for our readers.

Once that poll was promoted to a Facebook page with an anti-halal agenda and the results of the poll began spiking, it began to lose relevance to BDN readers.

That’s not to say I have anything against people from both sides having a say – the many hundreds of comments I am wading through will attest to that.

Whether or not I agree with your claims, kudos to the Boycott Halal in Australia Facebook group for having 70,000-plus followers – if only we could garner that much support.

However, having those same 70,000 people now bombarding us with comments and accusations of bias and terrorist support is beyond the pale.

As an example here is one comment posted to our Facebook page:

“I cannot believe that you have taken down a poll because it did not give you the results you envisioned. This is not journalism this is merely political correctness gone mad. You should be ashamed at your pathetic attempt to manipulate the results of a poll to suit a pre-conceived agenda.”

Hang on…we’re the ones manipulating results to suit an agenda?!?

Interesting take I’d suggest.

We asked: Does halal certification affect your purchasing choices? Yes, No or Haven’t checked.

It went live on our website about 10am Wednesday.

We discovered our poll was first posted on the Boycott Halal in Australia Facebook page at 1.39pm.

It must be said that post included a response from the page’s moderator saying “They do not even have 5000 followers... We had better not send thousands there in opposition just yet.”

At that stage the poll results showed 34 per cent Yes; 60 per cent No; and five per cent Haven’t Checked. Total number of votes: 76.

The article and poll was again promoted on the Boycott Halal page at 3.37pm.

At that stage the split was 83 per cent Yes; 14.5 per cent No; 1.5 per cent Haven’t checked. Total votes: 426.

From there it skyrocketed in favour of the Yes vote until it was closed around 5.15pm.