{"id":9169,"date":"2014-05-30T00:24:01","date_gmt":"2014-05-30T00:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=9169"},"modified":"2020-10-26T03:51:13","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T03:51:13","slug":"molecular-halal-testing-has-turned-up-pig-dna-in-cadburys-chocolate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/molecular-halal-testing-has-turned-up-pig-dna-in-cadburys-chocolate\/","title":{"rendered":"Molecular halal testing has turned up pig DNA in Cadbury\u2019s chocolate"},"content":{"rendered":"

The dietary laws that forbid Jews and Muslims from eating pork date back millennia\u2014but when they were laid down, nobody conceived of\u00a0detection tools that could\u00a0find minuscule\u00a0traces of the forbidden foods.<\/span><\/p>\n

Malaysia is the latest country to find itself with a tainted food scandal, after the government\u2019s halal inspectors\u2014who ensure that foods adhere to Islamic dietary laws\u2014used a DNA test to find trace elements of pork in Cadbury chocolate bars. That forced corporate snack giant Mondelez, Cadbury\u2019s parent company, to\u00a0issue a recall\u00a0of Cadbury Dairy Milk Hazelnut and Cadbury Dairy Milk Roast bars, and triggered the ire of Muslim groups.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey stuffed pigs into our mouths, then apologized,\u201d said Azwanddin of the non-profit group Hamzah Jaringan Melayu Malaysia,\u00a0who threatened to sue Mondelez. \u201cThis cannot be allowed.\u201d More than 20 Malay-Muslim groups\u00a0called for a boycott of Cadbury.<\/span><\/p>\n

Malaysia\u2019s Islamic Development Department, known as Jakim, began using DNA tests to certify halal products in 2010. It announced in 2011 that it had detected pig DNA in Heinz\u2019s HP Sauce and Tabasco hot sauce, though\u00a0both companies disputed the finding. Commercial DNA tests\u00a0can detect\u00a0as little as 5 picograms\u00a0(trillionths of a gram)\u00a0of porcine DNA.<\/span><\/p>\n

The supply chain of industrial food products is mind-bogglingly complex, with dozens of ingredients drawn from around the world, which provides many opportunities for unwanted ingredients to contaminate them. But how do traces of pork actually get into a chocolate bar? One possibility is that industrial food packaging sometimes uses lubricants and stabilizers (known as stearates) that are made from animal derivatives, including pigs in some cases.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCross contamination can be an issue because the stearate can effectively \u2018leak\u2019 into the food,\u201d said Bill Thompson, CEO of the lab testing firm Genetic ID Europe, in an interview with\u00a0FoodProductionDaily.com\u00a0in 2012.<\/p>\n

For the food industry, halal scandals are bad PR and even worse for the bottom line\u2014the halal food industry is estimated to be worth\u00a0hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide. Malaysia is seen as the global leader for halal certification, with exports of $9.8 billion last year. Manufacturers should probably get used to having their products put under the microscope\u2014literally.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: Quartz<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dietary laws that forbid Jews and Muslims from eating pork date back millennia\u2014but when they were laid down, nobody conceived of\u00a0detection tools that could\u00a0find minuscule\u00a0traces of the forbidden foods. Malaysia is the latest country to find itself with a tainted food scandal, after the government\u2019s halal inspectors\u2014who ensure that foods adhere to Islamic dietary …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[843,844,842,845,267,163],"class_list":["post-9169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-sayyed-abdulmalik","tag-cadbury","tag-chocolate","tag-dna","tag-food-products","tag-halal","tag-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9171,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169\/revisions\/9171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}