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1. Introduction
The various cases of contaminated Halal food such as mixing of Halal and non-Halal food in storage, poultry and meat slaughtering do not comply with the Shariah requirement (Omar and Jaafar, 2011), fraudulent Halal certification and physical contamination (Zulfakar et al., 2014), and the report by the Ministry of Health (MOH) that Cadbury Dairy Milk Hazelnut and Cadbury Dairy Milk Roast Almond analyzed by the MOH tested positive for traces of porcine DNA (New Strait Times, 2014) have forced the product to be immediately removed from the marketplace and damaging the company’s reputation.
The production of Halal food needs a very cautious understanding throughout the supply chain. Nowadays, Muslim consumers are very curious and want assurance that the products they consume are authentically Halal and should be tayyib, meaning wholesome, pure, healthy, nutritious and good (Othman et al., 2009). Therefore, the Halal foods supply chain integrity becoming an increasing concern (Suhaiza et al., 2010a; Lam and Alhashmi, 2008; Zulfakar et al., 2012, 2014).
To achieve the untainted Halal food supply chain integrity (HFSCIn), each partner in the supply chain from supplier until the end user need to be monitored, so that users can satisfy with the authenticity of Halal products (Bahrudin et al., 2011). Therefore, it is important to observe the integrity of each of the supply chain partners. In addition, the adoption of Halal traceability system should be addressed while the increasing demands for better Halal food supply chain among customers. This is crucial to diminish and to assure that the contamination does not exist throughout the process in handling Halal food in accordance with Shariah compliant. Furthermore, the traceability can also be used to trace the Halal status of particular food products at every stage of the supply chain and increase the Halal transparency and strengthens the Halal integrity (Zulfakar et al., 2014). According to Wilson (2012), a working knowledge of halal and the ability to establish networks and partnerships of knowledge sharing and collaboration are more crucial as the fact that the halal sector is wide-ranging and expanding.
Although numerous studies have been conducted in Halal integrity and food supply chain integrity (Abdul and Hazlinda, 2011; Zulfakar et al., 2014; Russly...