You are on page 1of 3

Name : Surya Hadi Wijaya

Student ID : 2513100098
Submission Date : March 23rd, 2015

Study of Halal Certification on Food and Beverages on


Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia
(Quality Assurance Case)
In this modern era, there are many food and beverage products
manufactured and sold in Indonesia. Not all food and beverage products sold in
the Indonesian region is Halal for consumption, because its material and
manufacturing process have violated the laws of Islam, for example, food made
from pork, beverages contain alcohol, goods made in a way that is unusual in
Islam, etc. Whereas the people of Indonesia, the majority are Muslim, has an
obligation to eat Halal food and beverage products. To protect Muslim
consumers from fraud of food and beverage products in Indonesia, the
government drafted RUU Halal Product Assurance which is addressed to the
food and beverage industry in Indonesia. All food and beverage products
including medicines should be inspected specifically to test its Halal status. The
inspection process is carried out by specialized staff of the Indonesian Ulama
Council (MUI) which includes auditing, labeling, and certification of Halal
products. The products will be inspected based on the type of product, so that if
an industry has five types of products, the inspection was also carried out on
every production process of these five type products. The industry should bear
the cost of auditors accommodation during the certification process as well as
pay a fee for the published Halal certificate. Cost levy any product halal
certificate is determined from the complexity of processes and the industry scale,
which ranges from 1 to 5 million rupiah per certificate for large enterprises and 0
to 2.5 million rupiah per certificate for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Although industry will gain the trust of Muslim consumers after the product is
certified, the high cost will also be a burden for the production process of food
and beverage industry in Indonesia, especially for small and medium enterprises
(SMEs) groups. With such additional burden of production, the industry also has
to raise the price of the products they sell to prevent loss. However, the
obligation of food and beverage products Halal certification in Indonesia is still
not necessary due to the majority of Indonesian food and beverage
manufacturers are Muslims who know how to make Halal goods.
The actual purpose of Halal certification is good for both manufacturer of
the products and its consumers. But due to its high operational cost, the Halal
certification is currently done only by several large scale food and beverage
enterprises in order to ensure its product Halal status and increase their
products competitiveness in Indonesia market. As reported by Kompas.com
(2014), the small and medium food and beverage enterprises couldnt afford the
cost of Halal certification process and sold their products to the market without
any Halal certificate. This is because SMEs produce food and beverages only in
an amount which is not so great and only have a small market access, so that
they are recognized by their market better. By doing so, they also dont need
Halal product assurance to convince their consumers. If food and beverage
industry conduct Halal certification for their products, then they need to pay at

Name : Surya Hadi Wijaya


Student ID : 2513100098
Submission Date : March 23rd, 2015

least 4 to 8 million rupiah for the certificate/Halal legalization including


accommodation of auditors and also Rp 10 for each label printed on a product
plus PPN retribution. The total cost of this Halal certification and labelling
process will be a great burden even for the large scale enterprises. This will lead
the manufacturers to charge these costs to the consumers through higher
product prices. If the price of the products is higher, then the consumers
purchasing power of their products will also decrease and in the long term may
result in an adverse effect to Indonesian economic condition.

Halal certification is a pretty good way to protect consumers against fraud


of food and beverage products in Indonesia, which is often occurred in the
Indonesian market, such as the case of Ajinomoto in 2000, meatballs mixed with
pork, alcoholic soft drinks, and more. But in fact, the current use of halal label is
misused by some of the food and beverage industry to deceive consumers. This
will reduce the effectiveness of Halal certificates and labels usage as food and
beverage products quality assurance in Indonesia. Therefore, Halal product
quality assurance agencies should also need to keep an eye on the circulation of
food products and beverages in the market regularly and take action against
counterfeit Halal labels and certificate to prevent fraud of quality products and
support industries that have been registered as the holder of the original Halal
certificate and label. In this condition, there will be regular costs that need to be
issued by the quality assurance agency to perform monitoring on Halal products
in market regularly, the more enterprise products registered as Halal certified,
the more personnel needed to supervise the use of Halal label in the market.
This, of course, also will be a burden for the Halal quality assurance agencies
and reduce the focus of product monitoring.
According to the arguments above, we can infer that Halal certification is
a good way to ensure the Halal quality of products, prevent food and beverage
fraud, and also increase the industry product competitiveness. But there are
some issues that inhibit the usage of Halal certificates and label as the quality
assurance of Halal products in Indonesia, such as the high cost of certification
activity, the lack of monitoring by the Halal quality assurance agency, as well as
misuse of the 'Halal' certificate and the labels. The obligations of Halal food and
beverage products certification in Indonesia is still not necessary for small and
medium enterprises (SMEs) considering they only made products for a small
market and have usually been recognized by consumers. If the 'Halal'
certification obligations is also applied to small and medium enterprises, it will
increase production costs they incur in their production system, and then they
will increase their products price but still couldnt compete with another products
in the same market, which will probably lead to bankruptcy of their business.
Reference
Asril, Sabrina. 2014. Menkes Minta RUU Jaminan Produk Halal Ditunda.
Kompas.com.
Accessed
March
21st,
2015.
<
http://nasional.kompas.com/read/2014/02/28/1600475/Menkes.Minta.RUU.J
aminan.Produk.Halal.Ditunda.>.
Mahrus, Zuhri. 1996. Antara Kepentingan Bisnis dan Menenteramkan Umat.
Accessed
March
21st,
2015.
<
http://www.library.ohiou.edu/indopubs/1996/12/23/0035.html>.
Suryowati, Estu. 2014. YLKI Tak Setuju Sertifikasi Halal Bersifat Wajib, Ini
Alasannya.
Kompas.com.
Accessed
March
21st,
2015.
<http://bisniskeuangan.kompas.com/read/2014/02/28/10374
04/YLKI.Tak.Setuju.Sertifikasi.Halal.Bersifat.Wajib.Ini.Alasannya>.

You might also like