Over the years, many non-Muslim friends of mine have claimed that a food that they bought is ‘halal’. I usually give them the benefit of doubt, but realised that their concept of ‘halal’ is varied. And end up eating non-halal food.

In order to be more responsible for what I eat, I attended a class on how to read food labels by Al Qudwah Academy some time back in 2017. The points were relevant and insightful, especially with the recent food trends. I thought by sharing what I know will serve as a reminder and benefit others too.

In this sense, I am grateful to be in Singapore, where there are many trustworthy organisations like MUIS, which provides halal certification (their process is really strict!), and halalfoodhunt, which aims to raise awareness and encourage people to consciously make halal choices. Their articles on halal food are really easy to read. I was also a part-time writer at HaveHalalWillTravel, a website that encourages travel and guides us to halal food overseas.

Halal Considerations

Everything is halal unless otherwise specified.

What are the conditions for halal meat?

• The animal must be alive, healthy and not in distress
• The jugular veins and oesophogus must be completely severed with a sharp knife (it counts even if you don’t cut off the head completely, but see these two veins cut)
• Blood must be completely drained from the carcass
• Complete submission to Allah s.w.t by the animals (so there will be a recitation of prayer before the slaughter)

Check out the video in this post on halal slaughter.

Why is halal food getting increasingly complicated?

BECAUSE OF TECHNOLOGY.

Your read it right. Food production in the past was done very simply – using simple and wholesome ingredients which were not exposed to non-Halal elements.

For example:

Ingredients can be halal, but the processes makes it non-halal.

So how do I confirm if the food is Halal?

There are a few ways:

Checking if it is halal certified

This is the easiest to confirm the halal status of a particular food.

In Singapore, this is our halal logo:

MUIS administers Singapore’s halal certifications, and our neighbours also have their own government organisations that handle these like JAKIM and MUI.

There are also private companies that administer halal certifications like the ICCV (Islamic Coordinating Council of Victoria), KHF (Korea Halal Federation), and CIA (China Islamic Association).

Note: Halal certification is production specific, and not brand specific.

For example, the same brand of chips can be halal certified here, but not in another country. This is because it was made in a different factory which may have different processes and include high risk ingredients.

There is no one halal body that governs all halal certification in the world, as standards differ depending on the predominant Islamic sect of that country. Check out this long list of service providers.

Checking if it is Muslim-owned

This is the second method. If a restaurant is Muslim-owned, there is actually no need for them to obtain a halal cert, because they know themselves what is halal food.

But people just get so paranoid and irrational sometimes, and keep asking why there are no halal certs at the premises. Business owners are probably very frustrated to explain again and again that they are Muslim themselves (so duh, they only eat halal food too ya know!).

But of course, it also depends on the owners themselves, and they have to be aware of the halal risk factors to ensure they serve halal F&B. Read more here.

Checking Food Labels

This is especially important when travelling overseas, or shopping for ingredients in a supermarket. We need to be alert and ask ourselves:

• Is this an animal or plant based product?
  • Be wary of animal based, organic and vegetarian is ok
• Are there any dubious elements?
  • Be wary of products with gelatin, emulsifier, flavorings, extracts and shortening etc
• Are there any risk factors?
  • Central kitchen or separate halal and non-halal kitchen, or serves alcohol and has a bar etc

Dubious Elements	What is it made of	Usage	Possible E-Codes*
Gelatin/ Fat/ Lipids	Proteins extracted from bones, tissues and organs of animals	For skin, hair and nail growth, immune function and weight regulation	E470 – E478, E542 (animal bones)
Emulsifier	Made of glycerol and natural fatty acids	To help blend ingredients properly	E400-E499
Shortening	A type of fat mostlly made of vegetable fat, unless lard is added in for flavour	To give crumbly pastry texture
Flavourings/ Extracts	Natural or extracted from inedible things like petroleum using high amounts of alcohol	To give flavour to food	E600-E699
Whey	Byproduct of cheese or made from animal/ vegetable based protein	Protein boosters
Lecithin	Usually extracted from egg yolk and soybeans, but can also be extracted from animals	To help blend ingredients properly for baking like bread	E322
Vanillin	Extracted from orchids, synthetic using alcohol, or from cow poop	A compound for the flavour and smell of vanilla
Rennet	Extracted from the stomach of a calf, gmo, microbial mushrooms and fungus, or fig tree, milk thistle	Production of cheese or coagulation of milk
Porcine/ Lard	Pig fat	Similar to how butter is used in cooking and baking
Sow Milk	Milk from a pig	Milk
Cysteine	Sourced from a plant or more commonly animal	Enzyme	E920

Let’s practise on some food!

Know the nature of your food to further assess what you could purchase:

Woah, so many restrictions?

At the end of the day, these restrictions are in place to protect Muslims from harm, and to ensure we only eat things that benefit us.

In reality, there are plenty of food choices right in front of us that our prophet, Nabi Muhammad s.a.w liked and consumed. For example honey, milk, figs, grapes, olive oil. As a good Muslim, we should emulate this because it is beneficial for us.

YOU are what you eat. So educate yourself, and don’t ‘was-was’ (be doubtful of your choices). Let’s learn to be flexible and assess accordingly.