Culinary Industry Health Product in Surakarta, Indonesia: Health Policy Guaranteeing Halal and Healthy Products

AIM: This paper aims to analyze the behavior of small and medium industrial food producers in Surakarta City in ensuring the halal status of their products according to the legal policy after the enactment of Law number 33 of 2014 concerning Halal Product Guarantee. METHODS: This paper uses a juridical empiric methods and approaches. RESULTS: The results showed that 87.79% of respondents stated that halal (good and health food for Muslims) certification is important, but only 16.07% already had a halal certification. This shows that the level of compliance of Law number 33 of 2014 concerning Halal Product Guarantee is still low. Islamic guidelines on ethics as a basis can be one of the elements in legal policy of this law that can be a driving force for legal culture on food producers’ behavior in guaranteeing halal and health products. There is a close relationship between ethics and law as both revolve around human actions. Non-compliance does not only come from a lack of ethics. Respondents stated that they pay attention to the process in food production so that they are guaranteed halal and healthy, but due to technical problems and costs in obtaining halal certification, they do not register to obtain it. Halal product guarantee is legal certainty of the halalness of a product as evidenced by a halal certificate. There is no legal impact if a product is not labeled as halal because in Law number 3 of 2014, it does not require entrepreneurs to register halal guarantees for their products. However, if a product has a halal label, it will gain the trust of consumers as a choice of products to be purchased or not. CONCLUSION: Thus, halal certificates will have a positive social and economic impact.