Meat and meat-based products: Challenges and opportunities in halal food security

Abstract

The demand for halal meat and meat-based products among the Muslim population in Malaysia has been increasing as meat is an essential food. Meanwhile, the non-Muslims are also becoming aware of the quality of halal meat, hence the access towards halal meat and meat-based products are increasing as well. However, the local production of halal meat is insufficient to cater the demand and this leads to the dependency on imported meat to ensure that halal meat is made available and accessible to the society in Malaysia. This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of halal meat and meat-based products for the sustainability of the halal food security in Malaysia. Document searching technique based on the available literature was used to fulfil the objectives of the study. The study found that the complex halal meat chain with several government agencies concerning halal matters lead to the inefficient treatment of maintaining the halal integrity. For this reason, focusing on the viable opportunities to increase the local meat production is significant in ensuring that the supply of meat is sufficient and halalan tayyibban.