Abstract

Food industry becomes one of the main sources of income for local community in Malaysia. Thus knowledge on halal food is so crucial to be studied. This paper tends to investigate some types of traditional halal food and to analyse the entrepreneurs’ knowledge on the subject. To meet these objectives, a set of questionnaire was then constructed to gather information on the issue. Using the non-probability sampling techniques, about 300 food industry entrepreneurs from the State of Terengganu and Kelantan were selected. The research indicates that there are 10 types of foods identified as traditional foods such as fish cracker, traditional Malay dessert, ketchup, fish sauce, chilli sauce, canned food, mee hoon, Malay traditional noodles, rice, and flying bread. Analysis on these traditional food industries shows that the most popular types of food industries out of 10 are rice dishes of its various kind followed by mee hoon and traditional Malay dessert as well as fish cracker. In addition, majority of the respondents have a good knowledge on halal food concept in Islam. More than half of the respondents have experiences and some exposure about halal food. Almost all of the respondents have a good knowledge on the concept of Al-Tayyibat (all kinds of lawful food) mentioned by the Quran. They were also able to differentiate between good and bad food as well as giving their full concerns over hygiene foods in terms of ways of preparing, processing and marketing.

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