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Campaign for halal food promotion

Since the beginning of March, 2017 the Committee on Halal Certification launched a campaign for promotion of halal food. The members of the Committee among whom Halil Hodzhov, Beyhan Mehmed, Dr. Shahin Syuleyman, Dzhemal Isa, organize meetings in the settlements where they inform the Muslim community about the halal products and the certificates for halal products.

The Chairman of the Committee Halil Hodzhov shared that most of the people think that the concept halal is related only to food but “basically halal is everything which is permitted and approved by the religion in the life of the Muslim related to his lifestyle, food, clothing, medicines, cosmetics.”

To the question “How can one product receive certificate for halal production?”, he replied:

“First, there should be a registered company, after which an application is submitted. We check whether the company is legal, what are its activities, what is its production and starts a procedure. It is checked whether the base meets our requirement, after which at a spot visit is checked the entire list of products which are produced there. Sometimes it is concluded that some of the products can receive halal certificate, and others not.

There are cases when some companies apply for a certificate for their entire production. Then are checked also their warehouses as well as the ingredients of each product separately.”

To the most interesting question: How the Committee ascertains that the companies respect the rules? Hodzhov replied: “The producers are not interested to write one thing on the label but to put something else. Basically they do not have interest in this. Because companies that apply for this certificate have made a preliminary market research and their objective is to find new customers. That is why before coming for certification to us they already know what is required from them.”

Yuzlem Tefikova