Has the Lack of a Unified Halal Standard Led to a Rise in Organised Crime in the Halal Certification Sector?

In recent years, halal certification has become an area of significant interest due to the high level of Muslim awareness about halal products, with the development of halal hubs and investments in Muslim countries. Unfortunately, the halal market is negatively affected by various factors, like the multiplicity of halal standards, disagreements between halal certification bodies and halal accreditation bodies, an increase in halal food crime in some countries, weakness of the authorities in ensuring the integrity of halal certification, and involvement with politics and religion, which have caused some anxiety among Muslim consumers. Therefore, the aim of this work is to inform lawmakers and animal welfare organisations in the EU regarding halal food. It shows data from literature regarding animal welfare in the EU and Islam, provides a critical consideration on the aim of a religious diet and its correlation with public health and food safety, and describes the state of the art of halal accreditation bodies (HAB) and halal certification bodies (HCB), in addition to providing information about gaps in the halal market, and a description of the unethical behaviour of some HCBs. The integrity of these bodies is necessary to make halal standards more comprehensive and efficient, and this can be achieved through the activation of a harmonised monitoring system for halal accreditation bodies in Muslim countries and national EU accreditation bodies.

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Islamophobia in Poland in the Context of the Migration Crisis in Europe

Ecumeny and Law ◽

10.31261/eal.2021.09.1.06 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 117-140

Author(s):

Janusz Balicki

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

Negative Attitude ◽

Eu Member States ◽

Political Sciences ◽

Muslim Countries ◽

Polish Society ◽

Migration Crisis ◽

High Level ◽

The Eu ◽

The Catholic Church

The high level of fear of Islam in Poland arose in spite of the fact that Poland has very few Muslims, just 0.1% of the population. This phenomenon began to surface in 2004, after Poland’s accession to the EU but grew considerably in 2015, during the so-called migration crisis in Europe. Public opinion polls indicate that it can be described by the term “Islamophobia”, which is often used in the literature of social and political sciences. The aim of the article is to explain the reasons for such a high level of fear of Muslims in Poland and the negative attitude towards Islam, given that it is contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church, with which Polish society mostly identifies. The article consists of three parts. Part one presents the reaction of the EU Member States to the migration crisis in Europe. The second part analyzes the position of the United Right (Pol. Zjednoczona Prawica) political coalition in Poland, towards immigrants and refugees from Muslim countries. Part three confronts the stands of the United Right in Poland and the position of the Catholic Church towards Islam.

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Cultural and practical aspects of halal slaughtering in food production

Medycyna Weterynaryjna ◽

10.21521/mw.6023 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 74 (1) ◽

pp. 6023-2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

ABDELBASSET BENZERTIHA ◽

BARTOSZ KIEROŃCZYK ◽

MATEUSZ RAWSKI ◽

AGATA JÓZEFIAK ◽

JAN MAZURKIEWICZ ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Animal Welfare ◽

Food Production ◽

Muslim Population ◽

Muslim Countries ◽

Lack Of Information ◽

The World ◽

Islamic Countries ◽

The Status ◽

Halal Food ◽

Religious Aspects

The rise in the Muslim population with the economic disability of Muslim countries have made the term halal common all around the world. The lack of information about halal in non-Muslim countries has made the status of imported halal products uncertain for Muslim countries. Halal meat is the most critical product due to the precise rules and requirements needed. In this review, we attempt to explain the types of halal and haram animals as well as the requirements needed for the allowed animals to be halal. Muslims must follow the halal rules mentioned in the Quran, Sunna and doctrines (scholars). The halal animals have been categorized with special and essential slaughtering requirements. However, the slaughtering should be performed in accordance with Islamic rules. The application of animal stunning has been allowed in some Islamic countries since the animal is still alive at the time of slaughtering with respect to animal welfare. Moreover, halal meat loses its halalness as soon as it becomes contaminated with najis (unclean). Indeed, it is important to understand the requirements of halal food, which cover religious aspects..

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Factors Affecting Willingness To Accept Foreign Halal Foods By Urban Malaysian Malays

Journal of Emerging Economies and Islamic Research ◽

10.24191/jeeir.v7i1.6128 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 45

Author(s):

Hasman Abdul Manan ◽

Shahira Ariffin ◽

Tengku Sharifeleani Ratul Maknu ◽

Irwan Ibrahim ◽

Harlina Suzana Jaafar

Keyword(s):

Sampling Technique ◽

Food Products ◽

Willingness To Accept ◽

Total Import ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

Subjective Knowledge ◽

Muslim Countries ◽

Global Brand ◽

Halal Food ◽

Knowledge And Attitude

The significant shifts in urbanites’ lifestyles have been the catalyst behind the increased in the consumption of foreign foods and beverages in Malaysia; particularly those made in western nations. Notably, Malaysia’s total import for food had risen significantly from RM26.7 billion in 2009 to RM42.6 billion and RM 45.4 billion, in 2014 and 2015 respectively. These days, urban Malaysian Malays are being inundated with various foreign Halal food products in local markets however, these can also leave them in a rather risky circumstance as the likelihood that some of these foreign food products are not suitable (i.e. Haram) for their consumptions, is relatively high. Halal food issues (namely those foods originated from non-Muslim countries) have created lots of anxieties within the Malaysian Malays’ society. Hence, this study aims to examine factors affecting willingness to accept foreign Halal foods by urban Malaysian Malays. Convenience sampling technique was used to obtain responses from 450 urban Malaysian Malays in designated areas within the Greater Kuala Lumpur/Klang Valley region. The results demonstrated urban Malaysian Malays willingness to accept foreign Halal foods were significantly affected by trust but displayed no relationships with subjective knowledge and attitude. Also, the insignificant attitude- willingness relationship signified the presence of the attitude-behavior gap. The study’s outcomes may perhaps offer new understandings on urban Malaysian Malay markets particularly for global brand owners and marketers.

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Efficient End-to-End Sentence-Level Lipreading with Temporal Convolutional Networks

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app11156975 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (15) ◽

pp. 6975

Author(s):

Tao Zhang ◽

Lun He ◽

Xudong Li ◽

Guoqing Feng

Keyword(s):

Performance Improvement ◽

State Of The Art ◽

Error Rates ◽

Convolutional Network ◽

Convolutional Networks ◽

Sentence Level ◽

End To End ◽

High Level ◽

Improved Accuracy ◽

Talking Face

Lipreading aims to recognize sentences being spoken by a talking face. In recent years, the lipreading method has achieved a high level of accuracy on large datasets and made breakthrough progress. However, lipreading is still far from being solved, and existing methods tend to have high error rates on the wild data and have the defects of disappearing training gradient and slow convergence. To overcome these problems, we proposed an efficient end-to-end sentence-level lipreading model, using an encoder based on a 3D convolutional network, ResNet50, Temporal Convolutional Network (TCN), and a CTC objective function as the decoder. More importantly, the proposed architecture incorporates TCN as a feature learner to decode feature. It can partly eliminate the defects of RNN (LSTM, GRU) gradient disappearance and insufficient performance, and this yields notable performance improvement as well as faster convergence. Experiments show that the training and convergence speed are 50% faster than the state-of-the-art method, and improved accuracy by 2.4% on the GRID dataset.

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Aircraft Requirements for Sustainable Regional Aviation

Aerospace ◽

10.3390/aerospace8030061 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 (3) ◽

pp. 61

Author(s):

Dominik Eisenhut ◽

Nicolas Moebs ◽

Evert Windels ◽

Dominique Bergmann ◽

Ingmar Geiß ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Systems Engineering ◽

System Level ◽

Policy Initiative ◽

The European Union ◽

Calculation Methods ◽

Figures Of Merit ◽

Performance Requirements ◽

High Level ◽

Different Levels ◽

The Eu

Recently, the new Green Deal policy initiative was presented by the European Union. The EU aims to achieve a sustainable future and be the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. It targets all of the continent’s industries, meaning aviation must contribute to these changes as well. By employing a systems engineering approach, this high-level task can be split into different levels to get from the vision to the relevant system or product itself. Part of this iterative process involves the aircraft requirements, which make the goals more achievable on the system level and allow validation of whether the designed systems fulfill these requirements. Within this work, the top-level aircraft requirements (TLARs) for a hybrid-electric regional aircraft for up to 50 passengers are presented. Apart from performance requirements, other requirements, like environmental ones, are also included. To check whether these requirements are fulfilled, different reference missions were defined which challenge various extremes within the requirements. Furthermore, figures of merit are established, providing a way of validating and comparing different aircraft designs. The modular structure of these aircraft designs ensures the possibility of evaluating different architectures and adapting these figures if necessary. Moreover, different criteria can be accounted for, or their calculation methods or weighting can be changed.

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Plant-based fructans for increased animal welfare: provision processes and remaining challenges

Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery ◽

10.1007/s13399-021-01473-2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

A. Zimmermann ◽

C. Visscher ◽

M. Kaltschmitt

Keyword(s):

Animal Welfare ◽

Dietary Fibre ◽

Animal Feed ◽

State Of The Art ◽

Public Awareness ◽

Well Being ◽

Glycosidic Bonds ◽

Health Promoting ◽

Branched Structure ◽

Stimulation Of

AbstractFructans are carbohydrates consisting of fructose monomers linked by β-2,1- and/or β-2,6-glycosidic bonds with linear or branched structure. These carbohydrates belong to the group of prebiotic dietary fibre with health-promoting potential for humans and mammals due to their indigestibility and selective stimulation of microorganisms in the gastrointestinal tract. This makes fructans interesting mainly for healthy food as well as animal feed applications. As a consequence of a growing public awareness for animal welfare, dietary fibre and thus fructans move into the focus as a fibre-rich feeding improving not only animals’ health but also their well-being. Against this background, this paper summarises the known effects of fructans focusing on pigs and highlights the state of the art in fructan production processes from plant material as well as selected current research lines. Additionally, an attempt is made to assess the potential of European fructan production for an application as animal feed. Based on this, challenges in the field of fructan production are addressed and alternative substrates for fructans are discussed and pointed out.

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Caged-electron States and Split-electron States in Endohedral Alkali C60

Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics ◽

10.1039/d1cp01341f ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

yifan yang ◽

Lorenz S Cederbaum

Keyword(s):

State Of The Art ◽

Electronic States ◽

Electron States ◽

The Common ◽

High Level

The low-lying electronic states of neutral X@C60(X=Li, Na, K, Rb) have been computed and analyzed by employing state-of-the-art high level many-electron methods. Apart from the common charge-separated states, well known...

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Behavioural Economic Influences on Primary Market Disclosure – The Case of the EU Regulation on European Crowdfunding Service Providers

European Company and Financial Law Review ◽

10.1515/ecfr-2021-0020 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 428-463

Author(s):

Konstantinos Serdaris

Keyword(s):

Service Providers ◽

Preliminary Evaluation ◽

Full Disclosure ◽

Content Quality ◽

Platform Governance ◽

Capital Markets Union ◽

Alternative Means ◽

High Level ◽

Start Ups ◽

The Eu

Abstract On 5 October 2020, as part of the Capital Markets Union (CMU) project, the European Parliament adopted, in second reading, Regulation (EU) 2020/1503 on European crowdfunding service providers for business (‘ECSP Regulation’). This Regulation, which shall apply as of 10 November 2021, consists of rules which aim at improving access to crowdfunding for EU businesses in need of capital, particularly start-ups, while, at the same time, providing a high level of protection to investors. To attain that it builds on three sets of measures: clear rules on information disclosures for project owners and crowdfunding platforms; rules on platform governance and risk management; and a coherent approach to supervision and enforcement. The focus of this article is on the disclosure-related set of provisions. Its aim is to demonstrate how the new rules embrace a more behavioural approach to primary market disclosure which, in contrast to the paradigm of full disclosure, focuses on the content, quality and framing of disclosure as an alternative means of enabling informed and, thus, allocatively efficient investment decisions. In a second step, it seeks to provide a preliminary evaluation of these measures both from a practical and a normative perspective.

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A new approach based on graph matching and evolutionary approach for sport scheduling problem

Intelligent Decision Technologies ◽

10.3233/idt-190114 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-16

Author(s):

Meriem Khelifa ◽

Dalila Boughaci ◽

Esma Aïmeur

Keyword(s):

Graph Matching ◽

State Of The Art ◽

Travel Cost ◽

Round Robin ◽

New Approach ◽

Traveling Tournament Problem ◽

Significant Interest ◽

National League ◽

Better Than

The Traveling Tournament Problem (TTP) is concerned with finding a double round-robin tournament schedule that minimizes the total distances traveled by the teams. It has attracted significant interest recently since a favorable TTP schedule can result in significant savings for the league. This paper proposes an original evolutionary algorithm for TTP. We first propose a quick and effective constructive algorithm to construct a Double Round Robin Tournament (DRRT) schedule with low travel cost. We then describe an enhanced genetic algorithm with a new crossover operator to improve the travel cost of the generated schedules. A new heuristic for ordering efficiently the scheduled rounds is also proposed. The latter leads to significant enhancement in the quality of the schedules. The overall method is evaluated on publicly available standard benchmarks and compared with other techniques for TTP and UTTP (Unconstrained Traveling Tournament Problem). The computational experiment shows that the proposed approach could build very good solutions comparable to other state-of-the-art approaches or better than the current best solutions on UTTP. Further, our method provides new valuable solutions to some unsolved UTTP instances and outperforms prior methods for all US National League (NL) instances.

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