Over the past two years, plant-based food consumption has grown by 49% across the EU, reaching a total sales volume of €3.6 billion.
HALAL Know Your Market
2025-05-15
In a short period of time, we had the Eblex Halal Forum and the World Halal Summit (WHS) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. These two events not only demonstrated the growing importance of the Halal industry, but also highlighted the increasing risks if the right marketing and participation strategies are not deployed.
Halal presents a massive market worldwide—23% of the world's population is Muslim—yet many marketers surprisingly view it as a homogenous entity. WHS is working to harmonize Halal standards requirements, but acknowledges that this is a difficult task due to varying priorities and emphases. To understand why, we only need to consider the different organizations across Europe that define Halal standards—and what is and is not acceptable. This is the crux of the matter with Halal standards, meaning it's even more important to truly understand what your customers want and what is appropriate for your application.
What many don't appreciate is how broad the market can be. Cheaper overhead costs and ultimately lower costs to consumers are getting, even with the added costs of certification and auditing. The industry needs to be proactive, not reactive.
First, it needs to lobby the government to allow the resumption of reversibly-stunned halal animal demonstrations, as in New Zealand, in order to ensure that the halal market is segmented and that stunning does not cause the death of the animals - a basic halal standard. Specific controls could be overseen by the OV to ensure that the implementation process is not abused.
Secondly, those companies that slaughter animals without stunning them need to develop and implement best practices to limit and reduce the number of animals slaughtered and the physical abuse that welfare activists worry about. Recently, most welfare agencies have been caught on camera with systematic pre-slaughter handling, where animals are not stunned before slaughter. Interestingly, the leaked video shows a week-long, routine pre-stunning slaughter process, with significantly less emotion and reporting.
MIS is a dizzying reality and needs to be minimized, but these existing records are not enough. The bottom line is to improve practices, understand your market, find the right products, the right customers and convey the right information, and hopefully everyone in the supply chain will benefit.