AN ESCALATING TRANSITION TOWARDS HALAL VACCINE CERTIFICATION IN MALAYSIA

Abstract

In Malaysia, there is a need to provide halal certification for vaccine products. The Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (JAKIM) together with other relevant government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry have improved and expanded the scope and standards of Malaysian Standard MS 2424 Halal Pharmaceuticals-General Requirements (Malaysian Standard MS 2424) in 2019, which serves as general requirements references for the halal pharmaceutical including vaccine products. It is a positive movement. Currently, Malaysia only relies on vaccine products that are not halal or whose halal status is unknown. Although the development of this standard will be able to create a halal vaccine product certification system, however, the actual implementation of the standard by the Malaysian halal certification body (JAKIM) and the vaccine industry needs to be scrutinized, because it is a new standard revision. Therefore, the study on halal vaccines based on Malaysian Standard MS 2424 as a progressive transition towards halal vaccine products certification implementation in Malaysia is very important, especially to see how the implementation can be carried out. In general, the objective of this study is to analyze the regulations, provisions, applications, issues, and challenges of standards. To achieve these objectives, qualitative method approaches have been used in this research, data were collected through document analysis and semi-structured interviews conducted with relevant informants who are directly involved in the halal vaccines sector in Malaysia. The findings of this study show that, in implementing halal vaccine certification based on Malaysian Standard MS 2424, some several obstacles and challenges had to be faced by the stakeholders. At the end of the study, several recommendations were prepared to strengthen and facilitate the certification implementation of halal vaccine products.