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Last Updated: Sep 25th, 2006 - 11:36:04 |
Malaysia, a mainly Muslim country with ambitions of becoming a “halal hub”, last week held a forum for industry giants and experts to discuss how to regulate and promote the booming industry.
Nestlé Malaysia, Britain’s biggest retailer Tesco, and fast food giant McDonalds joined experts and regulatory bodies to devise ways of boosting the market, developing global industry standards and preventing halal certification fraud.
Organizers said the event was the first to look at the sector in commercial terms, instead of focusing on the academic or religious aspects.
“So they might debate whether gelatine is halal... but industry players want to know about market access, how to increase their sales and networking”, said Abdelhamid Evans, on the staff of the organizers, KasehDia.
“There are a lot of issues emerging as halal goes global. The farm-to-fork nature of halal requires a forum where all of the different elements can get together, where issues can be resolved”, he told a press conference.
Under the concept of halal -- meaning “permissible” in Arabic -- pork and its by-products, alcohol and animals not slaughtered according to procedures of the Sharia (the Sacred Law of Islam) are all haram or forbidden.
Other goods and services can also be certified halal including cosmetics, clothing, pharmaceuticals, financial services and even tour packages.
“We believe this event could potentially help develop the industry and chart its direction in the near future”, says Jumaatun Azmi, managing director of KasehDia which has produced halal food guides for a number of world cities.
Malaysia has been vigorously marketing itself as a global center for the manufacture and export of halal products, in line with its moderate version of Islam, which emphasizes economic and scientific progress.
It hopes to gain the upper hand by instituting strict halal certification, and last year launched a standard which it hopes will be adopted internationally by an industry that currently lacks any harmonization in production and handling regulations.
Prime Minister Abdallah Ahmad Badawi has said that the global market for halal food is potentially worth up to 500 billion dollars a year and that Muslim countries should work together to tap into the booming industry.
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