Halal Food in South East Asia: Are We Looking Forward?

Southeast Asian countries consist of several countries with a majority Muslim population, such as Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia. As Muslims, finding and obtaining halal food is a must. Consumers have the right to know the halal-ness of a product. Meanwhile, the government is obliged to provide halal certification of a product. Some time ago, an issue emerged about the circulation of non-halal food from outside ASEAN in the form of instant noodles. In fact, some processed products from several ASEAN countries also do not have halal certification, even though these products are distributed in Muslim-majority countries. Based on these conditions, in this paper we will discuss in depth two issues, namely: (1) the problem of the distribution of non-halal food in ASEAN; and (2) legal protection of countries in the ASEAN region for halal certification of food for their citizen