Although Indonesia is a Muslim majority country, this halal certification process is sometimes considered foreign and difficult. There is a presumption, halal-certified companies must have employees who are truly pious, and the auditor will observe employee obedience in worship. For the management of non-Muslim companies, they worry that differences in religious identity in the card identity column, ignorance of the contents of the Qur’an and Hadith, as well as a series of Islamic rules, will make the company not pass the halal certification. This article is expected to answer these doubts.
All Material Must Have Halal Certificate
This is a latent myth circulating in companies that have never registered for halal certification. They complained of the difficulty of finding various ingredients, from palm sugar, to vegetables and fruit, which did not have halal certificates. In fact, there are a lot of ingredients that are not critical in terms of halalism.
For example, salt that only comes from evaporated sea water or mineral mining. Another example is extra virgin olive oil, which only comes from olives which are extracted by cold-pressed, without other additives. That is why, LPPOM MUI became the first halal certification body in the world to issue a list of uncritical raw materials, commonly called halal positive lists.
This list is very broad, covering various types of gases, metals, fermentation materials (such as tempe) to various types of chemicals and plant derivatives. This list makes it easy for companies and auditors to focus only on critical material, which either needs a halal certificate (such as meat and its derivatives) or that has enough supporting documents such as a production flow chart. Supporting documents other than halal certificates can be used to clarify whether critical and unclean materials are being used, such as refining agents for oil production, which generally use activated carbon and can be derived from animal bones.
The Production Facility Must Be Halal-Dedicated
This is another false assumption. A company can actually use the same facilities to produce halal and non-halal products. Examples such as producing praline chocolate with almond contents (halal certified) and rum contents (not certified) use the same mold.
There are several requirements that must be met for halal production. First, the product brand must be different. This is so that people are not confused and take wrong when shopping. Second, ingredients for products that are not halal certified are prohibited from pork and its derivatives. This is because pork and its derivatives are considered heavy unclean. As a result, facilities that come into contact with pork and its derivatives must be cleaned in a syariah manner. One way is to wash the water as much as 6x and 1x wash with a mixture of water and clay or other cleaning agents. Imagine the cost and time for each washing after using pig material. Not to mention, each production cycle with pig / derivative material runs the risk of leaving residue (even though it has been washed) and the longer, the greater the chance.
If there is contamination, there will be a huge loss of producers related to the bad image in the community. Related to this, the third requirement requires that companies in the future will not use production facilities with ingredients containing pigs / their derivatives. In addition, there must be sufficient cleaning so that there is no cross contamination from non-certified products. Finally, cleaning agents must not come from unclean ingredients.
Price Is High, Process Is Complex
This assumption is mostly owned by Indonesian companies and some foreign companies. This assessment may be due to lack of experience with other certification systems and ignorance. The experience of the author involved in ISO certification shows that the actual cost is lower and comes with several benefits such as an online process and the existence of customer service that can be contacted via WhatsApp and hotline. Payment is also easy because companies can fill credit cards, similar to buying goods online in a marketplace. This certificate is recognized internationally. This can be seen from the large interest of foreign companies mengaukan MUI halal certification. (RR)
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