Blockchain and halal meat traceability: Why technology hasn't closed the trust gap

When authorities in Malaysia uncovered a meat-smuggling cartel that had allegedly been operating for around 40 years, the world got a stark reminder of how badly things could go if left unchecked. Investigators said horse, kangaroo and pork from non-halal certified sources in Brazil, Ukraine, China and Argentina had been imported with the help of bribed customs officials, then repackaged and sold as halal beef. 

And it wasn’t a one-off either. That same year, researchers at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University’s Halal Science Centre found pork coated in oxblood being sold as halal beef in Bangkok markets. The issue is not limited to Asia. In the UK, the Food Standards Agency received 16 reports of suspected halal food misrepresentation in 2024, up from 12 in 2023 and eight in each of the two years before that. Of the 44 reports logged since 2021, half involved non-halal meat being sold as halal.

"It's the tip of the iceberg," said Nadeem Adam of the Halal Monitoring Committee, referring to the reported UK cases. Some industry experts has pitched the idea of using blockchain as fix for halal meat supply chains. In theory, the idea of a distributed, tamper-resistant ledger that records every step from slaughterhouse to shelf sounds like an obvious answer to a problem that, according to widely cited industry estimates, costs the global food industry between $10 billion and $40 billion annually.