This Shemitta year, the Israeli Rabbinate has gone the way of the Chareidim and rejected heter mechira, permitted "selling" of the Land. This was not well received by all Torah observant Jews and their rabbis. So a group of strictly Torah observant rabbis established a supervision service for those who want heter mechira.
The official rabbinate is furious. They say that it's illegal, but they allow all of the other competing kashrut supervision by the chareidim.
Sort of makes you lose your appetite.
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The Chief Rabbinate is struggling to preserve its monopoly on kashrut. It will not allow any independent kashrut agency to operate, except the Eida HaHareidis (Badatz)
They don't have a monopoly, because of the aida charaedit. A lot of people think that the aida charaedit is more genuine Judaism and they're competing with that instead of looking at the big picture, a Rav Kookian attitude of what's good for the entire country.
It's not that the Eida Haredit is more genuine, but rather it has a higher standard. And many people, in general, like a standard that is higher than the floor which is how rabanut food is seen by many more people these days, not only Haredim.
In the past, 'National Religious' people usually balked at stringencies and ridiculed them, some even saying that they go out of their way to choose a non-badatz product if it is on the shelf next to a badatz one and in the spirit of patriotism vis a vis the national rabanut.
Because of historic reasons, the Haredim essential control the national rabanut, many city chief rabbis are Haredim, and many Haredim work in the local city rabanuts, all this for numerous reasons.
Since the national rabanut kosher standard was basically the lowest common denominator, various 'sects' created their own kosher certification 'badatz' based on various stingencies. For ex: While regular rabanut certification demands checking a sample of one chicken in ten that are ritually slaughtered, mehadrin certification demands checking one in four, and I'm sure the 'badatzes' demand checking each one. Badatzes also demand extra mashgichim on site watching over each other, and changing blades more often. Yes, it made the food cost more, but it actually meant more Jewish jobs, meaning jobs that need avast knowledge of halacha as opposed to technical/professional expertise.
Now, the ubsurdity is that since the Rabanut is mostly Haredi workers, and I want to give kaf zchut, but we know that they simply do not care as much about regular rabanut since their people (friends and family) are not eating it anyway. Some mashgichim feel they have some sort of shlichut to just make sure that the food has at least that lowest standard so people will be eating something that is not entirely treif (because that is how Haredim see rabanut food).
So about this new National Religious badatz, it's not going to work unless some big Rabbi(s) back it up (maybe Rabbis Mordechai Eliyahu, Lior, Melamed, etc...), and the national religous crowd decides to unite, for once and for all, behind something and not waffle. And even then, most National religious people do not have 'rabbis' so why would they (we) care about anything anyways. 'We' are also more interested in 'real' jobs, not Jewish jobs like mashgichim. Sad.
In any case, the law says that you first have to have rabanut certification, and after than, you can add any badatzes. The Tzohar initiative is essentially saying you do not need rabanut certification, and instead rely on us.
good points
but I've been told by people in the food business that badatz has a bad name for actual reliablity
A businessman told me that when he was badatz, there was less stringent checking than when he was rabbanut.
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