MALAYSIA: OPPORTUNITY IN THE HALAL FOOD MARKET IN JAPAN MALAYSIA: PELUANG DALAM PASARAN HALAL DI JEPUN

Abstract

Halal is an important concept in Islam where an object or action is considered allowable in Islam. It is a similar to the concept of kashrut (kosher) practised by the Jewish communities, which have a significant market in North America and Europe, and it is especially a fundamental issue among the more observant of the minority Muslim community in predominantly non-Muslim countries. Though in Islam, the concept of halal is not too stringent, there are certain criteria that should be met before a product, especially food products are considered as halal. In Malaysia, efforts to control the quality of halal food products are carried out by the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (JAKIM). The status of JAKIM, as a formal programme with government support that issues halal certificates, allows the JAKIM-issued halal logo to be recognised internationally. Malaysia’s position as a respected Muslim country among the Muslim community in Japan provides Malaysia with the advantage to market food products with internationally-approved halal certifications to Japan. The halal food market is generally a large market, with a value of US$500 billion a year, and Japan contains a vacuum of this particular market that Malaysia could potentially fill, especially for the needs of the 70,000-125,000 minority Muslims in Japan.This vacuum of halal food market in Japan is due to 1) the failure of Japan to understand the dietary regulations of Muslims and to provide halal food products domestically, and 2) the lack of involvement of Muslim countries in providing halal food products allows for non-Muslim countries to act as providers, leading to the question of confidence on the status of the products. Therefore, Malaysia could potentially play the role of supplier and exporter of halal food products to meet the needs of the Muslim community in Japan.