Strategies for Increasing the Legal Awareness of East Java Business Owners and People to Accelerate the Success of Indonesian Halal Products in the Global Market

Abstract

With its diverse nature and supported by thousands of delicious foods and beverages, East Java Province, Indonesia has the potential to be promoted as a center of tourism and culture. The East Java Governor targets all food products to have halal certification by 2024. Therefore, the East Java government targets that 1.5 million Micro, Small, and Medium enterprises (MSMEs) must have halal certification. Unfortunately, the halal certification achievement is still currently far from the target. Thus, how to increase the legal awareness of business owners and the population of East Java to care for Indonesian halal products? And what are the strategies carried out to achieve these targets? This was qualitative research with an empirical approach. It employed the descriptive-explorative analysis of the researched issues. From this research, it was shown that the legal awareness of business owners on halal product certification and labeling from the aspects of legal knowledge, understanding, and compliance is already relatively good, although 42% of them are still in the process of registering for halal certification. Meanwhile, the East Java residents’ legal awareness of using halal products is still 45%, which is quite low. In achieving the target of increasing legal awareness of halal products, the provincial and city/regency governments and campus halal institutions carried out some efforts by facilitating the registration of halal certification, providing free halal certification, as well as establishing socialization, seminars, and guiding.