Country: Argentina
Organisation Name: The Halal Catering Argentina HCB
Started in the Year: 1962
Position: Co- Director and Advisor on Halal Certification & Procedures
Website: www.thehalalcateringargentina.com
Personal Introduction:
Nadima S. Khalil is Argentinean and a Muslimah.
Professional Introduction:
Halal plant auditor, Advisor on Halal procedures and rules. Trainer on Halal procedures for airline catering services, hotels and restaurants and general Halal procedures. Other roles in THCA: Certification decisions, developing of Manual of Halal Procedures, audits and Halal supervision of non-meat products.
Interview Questions:
What inspired you to start your career in the Halal industry?
Convinced to continue with the family business, but more than thinking about a business to continue, the challenge for me was the values of my family and the traditions regarding food. Halal was always part of our diet, it was part of our identity, living in a non-Muslim country, we have had it since childhood and in all areas in which we do not relate, explain what we can eat and what not, look for food according to us. I think many of us were Halal auditors without actually being Halal, trying to look up products in supermarkets, calling companies and asking about a questionable ingredients. I belong to a family whose community, when they arrived in Argentina, needed to go out and find a place to slaughter a cow or a lamb because they wanted to eat Halal food. That community’s need also indirectly led to the birth of slaughterhouses or slaughter experts. Who were in search of Halal food. That is why my grandfather Don Kabalan Khalil, was little by little putting together a team of Muslim workers and supervisors to later form the Halal certifier.
What were the challenges you had to overcome in the initial stages of starting your career?
I was very young when I decided to accompany my father in THCA, and the biggest challenge for me was that I had no academic training from Halal at that time, but I felt that I had a lot of knowledge gained from listening to my father participate in forums, trips, Halal audits. , read everything he brought from the Halal world forums. I was very anxious to develop myself in an area that I thought was going to be difficult. Suddenly I found myself participating in my first Halal training accompanying my father in a Halal certification seminar where we will explain the importance of religious mandates when it comes to feeding ourselves.
On the other hand, the Argentine food industry at that time only certified meat, so I had to relate to the meat-packing industry, which was 100 x 100 managed by men. So, being young, female, and a Muslim in a non-Muslim country, talking about Halal and trying to find my way through certification was a challenge. I knew that in the world of Halal certification there were leading women who were pioneers such as Dr. Aisha Grindra, the first president of the WHC Halal council and director of Mui (Allah ierhama), as well as Dr. Mariam Abdul Latif from Malaysia. Since we had constant communication, they were our referents for consultation. But on the first trips to the Halal forums or visits to the Halal accreditation entities, I imagined that the participation
| Even religious people like the MUFTIS congratulated my father for encouraging his female daughters or his daughter in this case me to continue with Halal work. |
of women in this field was not well seen and contrary to the prejudices that we take from the West, I have always been welcomed and received. Even religious people like the MUFTIS congratulated my father for encouraging his female daughters or his daughter in this case me to continue with Halal work.
Another challenge from the point of view of the certification field: getting non-meat food industries to see the need of the Muslim market as an opportunity. For example, after participating in a Halal fair, they required us to certify soybean lectin or powdered milk, the Argentine industry understood that this was possible if they agreed to receive training and search for suppliers of raw materials according to Halal requirements. And so it was that I began to train quality and plant managers, foreign trade managers and all those who were related to Halal food exports. Thank God I have managed to train more than 1000 companies.
What were the most important learning experiences you would like to share?
For my personal experience as a Halal auditor, the most relevant thing was to have put myself in the shoes of the different operators or functions that are carried out in a plant, to learn from the food or product factory how it was produced, what were its critical points of control. having gone to witness tasks and put myself in the place of the slaughterer and understand their needs from the human point of view, from their practice, from the Halal to know what to demand of the plants later long before ISO standards are installed, for example in the Halal certification, and that is given by practice having participated in Halal forums and having visited the supermarkets of each country to learn about the idiosyncrasies of the Muslim who lives in a Muslim country and what he looks for when buying products from a non-Muslim country.
What advice would you give aspiring leaders in the Islamic Economy?
Do not be afraid of challenges even if the country where you have to develop Halal certification is not Muslim, even if the industry to be certified is still difficult, you can always find a way to reach them, not just the industry but also to all those who are part of the trade, whether external or internal, I always base our experience on export products because Argentina does not have a local market, so we have opted to train government entities, chambers of commerce, product promotion agencies, international event organizers, and of course plant managers. and all of our presentations started with a cultural, religious introduction, we started with HALAL WHY, FOR WHOM AND FOR WHAT bringing them closer to our religion by providing different information to what is read in the media, makes them closer to Halal, It makes them experience Halal and want to commit to the challenge of being certified and a message for Halal consumers and the accreditation bodies of each country or Halal market, is that they are always in communication with the certificates of origin of the product. Because each market and each country is different, each certification body seeks a way for this product to arrive with the maximum Halal guarantee for the Muslim who is on the other side of the world.
