Ministry not to collect 'halal' labeling fees

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Ministry of Religious Affairs has avoided possible charges of foul play in relation to its proposal to change the existing government regulation on halal (permitted under Islam) certification, claiming that it will not get involved in matters relating to payment.

Ministry director for religious affairs Imam Maskoer Alie said his ministry would only have a role in the registration of certification proceedings.

However, he could not give details of its regulatory obligations or the other institutions involved in the certification process.

Maskoer said the payment of fees to obtain halal certificates would be managed by the Ministry of Finance.

"The ministry will oversee the payment system. There will be another government regulation on this matter," he said after a discussion over the weekend, without elaborating further.

However, spokesman for the Ministry of Finance Maurin Sitorus said that his office's legal department had not yet been notified of the issue.

"Our legal department has yet to receive any information about it," he said.

Under the newly revised draft regulation, food companies are required to register their products with the Ministry of Religious Affairs to obtain halal codes before they go on the market.

The certification will only be valid for products that are already registered with the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM).

Maskoer said his ministry would assign a competent halal auditor to examine the registered products.

The auditor's results would later be taken to the Indonesian Council of Ulemas (MUI) fatwa (edict) commission, which is authorized to certify whether a product is halal or not.

The certificate would later be "marked" as halal by the auditor, which would subsequently return it to the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Despite the complicated procedures, applicants for the certificates are only required to pay once, Maskoer said, but he added that the certification validity term was still being discussed.

"Producers are simply required to put a halal code on the most eye-catching part of their product packaging," Maskoer said.

The design of the halal code, he said, would be a reflection of "nationalism, with the figure of a garuda and the word 'halal' in both Arabic and Indonesian."

He said that, based on the revised draft regulation, there would no stickers for the certification.

The first draft regulation stipulated that producers had to put a special hologram sticker on each of their products, which would have become the basis for payment of certification labels.

The government earlier issued two regulations on a halal certification system -- one in 1995/1996 and another in 2001. Both the rulings drew sharp criticism from companies and the public at large, due mainly to suspicions of possible foul play behind the legislation.

Producers have complained that the charging of high fees for halal certification has increased their production costs, thereby affecting the price of products.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Consumers Foundation (YLKM) promised to observe the drafting of the current halal certification regulation, which has also come under fire lately.

"Both the past regulations and the new draft regulation on halal certification have the same motive: to protect Muslim consumers," foundation chairman Bambang S. Irawan said in a statement.