Compliance by the majority of people with a certain social norm can have a huge impact on society and its system. As with the example of Islamic dietary laws and strict adherence to halal food, it has significantly affected the structure of many American and European markets and increased the presence of halal products in them. This has also affected the laws of the value chain that these companies must comply with. Another important aspect is that most non-Muslims have started to choose halal food, pretending that it is healthier and cleaner in comparison with other products. All of the above facts prove that the religious norm as a commitment to halal food is a social norm and has a huge impact today.
The world lives in an amazing time and people are witnessing a transition from an era of thoughtless consumption to one of the healthy and natural products. One such type of product is halal, which is permitted and permitted by religious prescriptions. These prescriptions have been strictly observed by Muslims for more than 1,400 years. But only in the last decade has halal become a brand, becoming an element of the market mechanism, due to the growth of Muslims around the world and its urbanization. The popularity of the brand was also influenced by the fact that Western corporations began to produce these products on a global scale. To date, the volume of halal products market in the world is estimated at more than $ 2.1 trillion annually. Consumers of Muslims in the amount of about 2 billion is a powerful economic force of the market, by 2050, Muslims will be 2.8 billion.
The international brand "Halal" properly justifies its universality. After all, the Muslim world is not an abstract concept. The Muslim world is one-fourth of the world's population, concentrated in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The Pew Center report indicates that the largest concentration of Muslims is in Asia, where more than 60% of the total number of Muslims live, 20% in the Middle East, and the rest are scattered around the world. In the Middle East, traditionally considered the region with the highest concentration of Muslims, there is only 1% of the world's population.
Another interesting feature. More than 300 million Muslims, i.e. one-fifth of the population of the Islamic world, live in countries where Islam is not the dominant religion. India is home to 177 million Muslims, more than any other country except Indonesia and Pakistan. There are twice as many adherents of Islam there as in Egypt, which is considered the largest Arab country. Also in China there are more Muslims than in Syria (interesting observations are given in the media - in China there are about 22% of Chinese people under the age of 30 who profess Islam); in Germany there are more than in Lebanon, in Russia - 20 million Muslims, more than in Jordan and Libya combined. Muslims are also a minority in sub-Saharan Africa, with only 240 million Muslims living there, about 15% of the world's Muslims. Muslims live mostly in Asia (about 1 billion 180 million), followed by Africa (more than 500 million), Europe (about 50 million), North and South America (more than 10 million), Australia and Oceania (0.7 million). Thus, consumers of halal products represent different races, peoples and nationalities and, naturally, different cultures of behavior and food consumption - as a single organism, they are united by the common - faith, truth, and tradition. If we translate the number of consumers into the language of the economy, we can get stunning figures on the global halal market. This is evidenced by the latest data of Transparency Market Research: the global market of halal products will increase by 2020, reaching a turnover of $6 trillion, and by 2030 - up to $10.5 trillion. Which market in the world today can demonstrate such opportunities? Earlier in the report of Thomson Reuters and consulting company Dinar Standard, the market volume was estimated at more modest figures: $2.6 trillion by 2020. Experts from Euromonitor International note that sales of fresh meat in the Middle East and Africa increased by 19%, which is 13% above the global average. In the Asia Pacific region (Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia), fresh meat sales grew by 54% between 2009 and 2014. This was 33% in the UAE, 28% in Egypt and 19% in Morocco. It is also curious that consumers of Halal products spend 30% of their income on food, while consumers of conventional food products - 14%, according to research conducted by the consulting company Australis (France) in 2012. Only multinational corporations, such as Nestle, McDonald's, KFC, retail chains Carrefour and Tesco, are able to launch large-scale production so quickly. Nestle SA (Malaysia), a leading player in the food and beverage market, produces about 300 items of halal products at 159 factories out of 480 owned by the company.