BPLAWYER - 2017 was a hard year for BPOM as some brands of instant noodle from
Korea are reported containing pork. These products may not be considered
harmful in other countries. However, they became a very big problem when they
are sold in Indonesia as 70% of the people are Moslem who is prohibited by
Islam to eat non-halal food and drink
like pork, alcohol, some animal fat, etc.
This case has made BPOM, as a national agency in charge of food and drug
supervision, is considered negligent in performing its duty to protect the
society from any product that could harm them. Besides criticism from all the Muslim
people in Indonesia, BPOM also got harsh comments from MUI (Indonesian Council
of Ulema) and YLKI (Indonesians Consumers Foundation). They felt disappointed
toward BPOM and claimed it careless.
According to YLKI, this problem is not supposed to occur in Indonesia since
there has been law related to halal
and haraam food from MUI. It has been
clearly stated by the law that all food and drink distributed to the market
should be labeled with halal logo. Therefore,
every producer must submit halal certificate
when registering its product to BPOM if the product is halal. However, BPOM also should be careful in examining every
product registered, especially the imported one.
A non-halal product could
enter Indonesia easily because so far, BPOM just focuses on the acceleration of
distribution, and not on the consumer protection. It puts trust in the importer
country to make the registration of the distribution
license easy without thinking that the producer would register a product
that contains a prohibited substance in Indonesia. In that way, the product
could quickly be distributed to the market.
Now BPOM does not want to take any risk anymore related to imported
products which do not meet the safety standard in Indonesia. It believes that
there should be improvements in all aspects. BPOM will start its effort by
restricting the requirements to obtain distribution
license.
It also would be very careful in checking the halal certificate from MUI for every product which is registered by
the foreign producers that are not from Moslem country. In addition to that,
the examination of the products will be done very carefully to ensure that the
society consumes food and drug with the nutrition that has been required by
BPOM.
More importantly, there should be strict punishment if there is a
producer that fakes the documents while registering it to BPOM. The head of
BPOM, in the press conference held in Tanjung Priok last year, promised that
she would give administration penalty like revoking the distribution license
and prohibiting the producers to sell their products in Indonesia for a period
of time.
The punishment could be more severe if the producer still not deterrent
with the previous penalty.
BPOM hopes that the society becomes more careful before buying any
product in the market. They should check whether there is a halal logo and BPOM code on the
packaging because the non-halal foods
are also sold in the market, but without a halal
logo.
If the consumer still doubts with the status of the product, they must confirm
it by call BPOM on 1-500-533, check the code number on BPOM website
(www.pom.go.id), or download BPOM application on their smartphone.
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