Consumers' Confidence Level Towards Imported Halal Meat Post-Meat Cartel Issues

Abstract

The halal industry has been triggered by the reported discovery of imported halal meat, like meat smuggling, fake halal logos, meat fraud and cartel meat issue. The meat smuggling incidence in the past 40 years had an unfavourable impact on the confidence level of Muslim consumers towards imported halal meat. Thus, this study is conducted to examine the confidence level of Muslim consumers towards imported halal meat. This study aims to investigate the knowledge of Muslim consumers towards imported halal meat and their confidence level. The quantitative approach has been adopted to achieve the research objective, where the data is collected via survey using Google Form. The questionnaires were distributed to 120 respondents consisting of Muslim consumers in Selangor. The collected data has been analysed adopting descriptive, frequency, reliability and correlation analysis using SPSS v.29. The findings indicated that 40.8% (49 respondents) still feel uncertain and less confident about purchasing imported halal meat in the market. However, the result showed that 71.7% (86 respondents) had shown positive signs of awareness about imported halal meat and are always sensitive to issues related to imported halal meat that often occur in Malaysia, such as the issue of fake halal logos found on the packaging of imported meat, meat products or any other food products. It is recommended that halal-related authorities or agencies work hand in hand to provide and promote clear information on imported halal meat especially on the recognised foreign halal logo by the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (JAKIM). By enabling Muslim consumers to be sensitive, this would increase their confidence level in real halal status for imported halal meat sold in the market.