DIFFICULTIES IN IMPLEMENTING THE HALAL TRACEABILITY SYSTEM AMONG IMPORTED HALAL MEAT SUPPLIERS

Nowadays, a lot of halal related issues arouse a bad image to religion and many parties includes halal industry players and consumers, directly or indirectly. The meat cartel scandals issuehas shocked Malaysia in the previous year. In conjunction to the issue, many Muslim consumers had lost their confidence towards the consumption of halal meat imports. The unfolding scandal over fake halal documentation, fake halal logos, and fake halal meat has really affected the halal meat import industry since consumer confidence is decreasing and honest businesses are working hard to convince customers of their compliance with halal requirements. Transparency in the implementation of a halal traceability system on the meat import supply chain helped prevents any violations or fraudulent cases. The aims of this studyis to discover the challenges of implementing a halal traceability system among halal meat import suppliers. This research adopts a qualitative method and the data was collected through a semi-structured interview. The thematic analyses was conducted on transcribed and coded data interview. The results of the study showed that time consumption, cost implementation, and lack of digital expertise have become challenges for halal meat import suppliers in implementing a halal traceability system.