Halal certificate is a mark of quality promised by a brand to its consumers and losing the certificate when it is revoked can spell terrible disaster to a halal-certified business. 

Global Halal Community e-news sought help from Serunai’s Halal subject matter expert and Proffer Services Principal consultant Mahellah Omar to shed some light on how breaching Non-Conformance Report (NCR) can put a business in serious jeopardy.

Mahellah said that NCR is a halal-related document that addresses specification deviation or work that fails to meet certain halal quality standards.

“Unfortunately, a business may face a revoking of their halal certificate after a certificate holder fails to perform prompt corrective action upon an issuance of a non-conformance report (NCR),” she said, adding that the NCR are the standard operating procedure (SOP) or standard requirement or any rules set in the halal-certified factory itself.

She added that business owners may also see this positively as a training tool for managers to train other employees to help prevent similar situations from happening again. 

“Instead of thinking of NCR as a punishment, business owners should see it positively as a chance for them to further improve themselves,” said Mahellah who added that the corrective actions highly depend on the seriousness of the offence which are categorised into serious, major and minor. 

“Serious cases require the business owner to act upon the required corrective actions immediately,” she said. 

“The recent revoking of a halal certification involving a famous instant noodle business took place after the business owner failed to react with corrective measures which resulted in the revoking of their halal certificate,” added Mahellah, who also highlighted that internal audits are categorised as a requirement set from the company’s internal auditors and auditors from Standards Malaysia or JAKIM. 

She also said the NCR notice issued by a halal executive is to remind a business that the audit is happening before the check by JAKIM. 

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“This recent revoking of halal-certified certificate to the instant noodle has taught us not to take cleanliness lightly because when consumers lost their trust with the brand owner, it takes a lot of financial to control the damage done,” said Mahellah. 

She also reminded that businesses to be more proactive in maintaining the integrity of their halal certification especially when an NCR is issued. 

A training conducted to increase awareness among staff members is an example of an NCR corrective action. 

It is where an audit report is required to be prepared for each corrective measure taken which can be quite tricky to manage especially when the audit reports start to pile up as a company grows with constant changes of its staff members. 

Digital halal management system developed by Serunai Commerce namely VH SMART™ is an effortless system to manage corrective action audit reports. 

Developed in 2020, it has been well received in several countries to help them manage and corrective action efficiently which interrelates with halal implementation management through raw material records, purchase proof and training record. 

Maintaining halal status or raw material certificate validity is another example of corrective action. With tens of thousands of certificates and ingredients to manage, it is a daunting task without an efficient digital halal record keeping system like VH SMART.