How safe is your Halal Food?

Role of Meat Traceability Solutions in making your steaks safe and trustworthy.

Everyone has some food preferences. It could be just what they like or arise out of health concerns or religious practices. One such food preference across the world is Kosher food or Halal Food.

For those of you who don’t know what exactly is Halal Food, let us explain.

Halal food, as per Islamic customs, is considered any food or consumable item made, manufactured, and stored as per the customs prescribed in Islamic law. That includes the raw materials, processing methodology, and cleaning techniques followed for the particular food item in question.

With the growing cosmopolitan nature of the world, this requirement is not restricted to just one part of the world now and has a global target audience. Consequently, Halal food is now available across supermarket aisles and small grocery stores.

The Global Halal Food Market

Halal, as per traditions derived from the Islamic customs, were restricted to animal products alone. However, in the current market Halal food encompasses a wide variety of food items that are prepared, stored, and distributed using a stringent standard.

The growing popularity of Halal food across the world from all sections of society is one of the prime reasons that the market is expected to reach a size of USD 739.59 billion by 2025.

Food items that come under Halal food originate from different sections of the world and are one of the most traded commodities. This raises concerns on the authenticity and reliability of such products, making traceability a dire necessity in this market.

Halal Food and Meat Traceability

While Halal has now extended beyond animal products, popular Halal foods remain to be dairy and meat products. Customers are now turning to responsible and eco-conscious manufacturers in this segment to source halal food products.

Traceability solutions implemented in the meat and dairy industry are an ideal method for meat food manufacturers to establish credibility and instill confidence in their customer base.

Halal as a concept is as much about the raw materials as it is about the manufacturing and storage practices followed by the brand. Hence, the industry needs traceability solutions that can track and trace each point in the production cycle to relay it to the customer.

Using track and trace solutions at each critical event in the meat processing industry allows the global leaders of the Halal industry to safeguard their brands and reputations from incidents of fraud and counterfeit products.

Much of the action happens right after the animal is butchered into major 8 prima cuts, these pieces are then wrapped in bags and sent further for processing. These large primal cuts are further cut into consumable steak size portions for retail chains. It is usually here the steaks of different animals, farms, countries get mixed and labelled. Traceability in the livestock-meat industry is to identify the livestock and poultry back to their origin.

All over the world, red-meat consuming countries are resolute about implementing blockchain to make their meat processing industry and brands sustainable, transparent and consumer friendly. Australia is focusing on the use of traceable solutions in the primal-to-steak food chain by their Australian Meat processing Corporation(AMPC) and other government agencies being involved as they claim for the best grade beef and the export numbers speak for themselves.

Current Trends in the Halal Food and Meat Traceability Markets

While there are many prevalent practices in the Halal food/meat traceability market across the globe such as lot-tracking, barcodes, and other tracking technologies, their lack of real-time availability has pushed the industry to embrace a smarter and more tech-savvy solution like Blockchain.

With Blockchain as the technology for traceability, companies can now record key events in the manufacturing cycle and demonstrate the process, raw materials, and storage conditions in real-time to the users.

The data sought via blockchain can be accessed via a public interface and establishes the truth with clarity. It is also easier to use, manage, and train across the product cycle in place of multiple technologies that may need integration later.

As the larger manufacturers are moving to blockchain technologies to implement traceability solutions, countries that have a stake in the meat manufacturing industry also are looking to adopt these practices.

For example, Latin America conducted a sustainable beef roundtable recently to tackle the growing demand for sustainable, eco-conscious, and traceable beef products across the world. While many manufacturers claimed to already comply with the requirements, they lacked the documentation and technology to certify their products for the global market. The roundtable urged the major meatpacking companies to implement the promised traceability solutions and leverage technology to ensure complete 360-degree traceability in all their products.

Advantages of Red-meat Traceability Systems for the Beef Industry:

With the integration of this traceability technology into the halal meat and livestock industry, many issues such as animal disease outbreaks can be resolved. Counterfeiting is another big problem in the export meat industry and every country is particular to adopt and use this tool for effective and immediate management as it provides data about the history, health, movement, and origin of the beef products.

As a result, the confidence of global as well as domestic consumers is improved as it provides transparency at a scan of a label on their steak. Moreover, with livestock traceability and documentation of cattle-id, the operational effectiveness of the industry can be enhanced and the product quality can be improved.

Global Meat Traceability System Market by Application

End-to-end meat traceability solutions cannot be implemented without all the key players in the market demonstrating the willingness for active participation in the solution. When it comes to Halal food, the Global Meat traceability systems and customers rely on the meatpacking centers and Supermarkets for ethical, sustainable, and traceable products.

Meatpacking centers have the onus of documenting the products they receive from various cattle farms and dairy farms and passing on the baton to supermarkets that stock these products. While larger brands have begun to integrate blockchain and other track-trace systems into product labeling, homegrown products can be traced via these stakeholders only.

Meat Traceability has far-reaching consequences when applied to the Halal food industry. It can make or break a brand and tilt customer loyalty in the blink of an eye.

If you are a brand working in the halal food or meat industry, it is time to embrace the technology available and provide traceable products to your consumers.

Reach out to us for livestock management, dairy and meat processing solutions.

Contact SourceTrace for a run-down of the different meat traceability solutions available in the market and help you position yourself into a leader in the industry.

SourceTrace's software solutions have been deployed across 37 countries and 4 continents already. We are on a mission to make agriculture and food systems more sustainable. Get in touch and we will extend our expertise and commitment to you.

Request a Demo