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1. Introduction
Religion plays a crucial role in food production (Al-Mazeedi et al., 2013; Thomas et al., 2015) and demand (Razzaque and Chaudhry, 2013; Rezai et al., 2015). In fact, almost every religion in the world restricts certain types of food to be consumed by the devotees (Kim et al., 2008; Tieman and Hassan, 2015). The teachings of Islam command its devotees, the Muslims, to consume only halal foods and restrain from the haram. The instruction to do so is clearly mentioned in the Quran and Hadith. For instance, in Al-Baqarah (Chapter 2) verse 172, Allah commands the Muslims to eat good and permissible food, while in Al-Maaida (Chapter 5) verse 3, He tells the devotees the types of forbidden foods:
O believers! Eat of the good (lawful) things which We have provided you and be grateful to Allah, it is He whom you worship (Al-Baqarah, p. 172).
Forbidden to you (for food) are: dead meat, blood, the flesh of swine and that on which hath been invoked the name of other than Allah. That which hath been killed by strangling, or by a violent blow, or by a headlong fall, or by being gored to death; that which hath been (partly) eaten by a wild animal; unless ye are able to slaughter it (in due form); that which is sacrificed on stone (altars); (forbidden) also is the division (of meat) by raffling with arrows: that is impiety. That is grave disobedient. (Al-Maaida, p. 3)
Halal means permissible or permitted in English, while the opposite, haram, means forbidden or illegal. Though commonly associated with Islamic ritual slaughter and Muslim consumption behaviour (Bergeaud-Blackler, 2007), the doctrine of halal pervades through every aspect of life, including in the field of business and management. As mentioned by Lada et al. (2009, p. 66) “[Halal] is in the realm of business and trade and it is becoming a global symbol for quality assurance and lifestyle choice”.
Moving forward, taking into consideration the current complexity of modern food supply chain (Tieman et al., 2012; Talib et al., 2015a), cases of fraud halal certification and physical contamination of halal food products (Zulfakar et al., 2012) and...