food and pharmaceutical products has had the potential for haram ingredients or contamination.Even though I was well aware of this fact, breaking down with the simple example, such as chocolate, showed me how many different steps in food production and processing have the potential of exposing a normally halal product like chocolate to haram ingredients or contaminants. Consider the widely loved and seemingly innocent product like chocolate. Chocolate is made from cacao beans that are essentially handpicked from plants. Beans are opened, fermented and dried by hand. However, after that they are shipped to another processing plant that converts them into liquid, powder, or any other ingredient form for future use. It also means that they change hands and get exposed to different other types of manufacturing ingredients and processing aids.Some of the ingredients that are added along the way may be sugar, milk powder, emulsifiers, flavors, and preservatives. With each new additional ingredient, it has to be examined whether the creation of these new ingredientseven if used in small amountsare also halal. Processing aids, like enzymes, are ingredients used to chemically hasten the production from one stage to anothersuch as converting cacao beans to cacao liquid. Emulsifying agents help provide the smooth texture to chocolate, and preservatives help increase the chocolates shelf life. Processing aids, such as lubricants, help flow the chocolate product through the factorys various machinery and stages.In the end, the final product is a packaged bar of chocolate. As innocuous as it may sound, packaging itself is now a rising issue for halal contamination. Sometimes the packaging may be made from an undesirable source; sometimes it may be coated with a haram product, like a wax.When I heard this, my first thought was that I needed to read the ingredients labels more carefully. However, it turned out that it was not as simple a solution as that.A quick check with IFANCAs food technologists and different websites reveals that the FDA does not require manufacturers to list names of processing aids and packaging materials used.Ms. Omar described the scrutiny products, like the chocolate bar, would receive at the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of Americas halal certification process. IFANCA was established in 1982 in Chicago by a group of concerned Muslim food technologists. By virtue of their scientific professional education, they were of greater understanding why so many packaged goods and foods, like chocolate, would not fit the bill for the Islamic diet. This really concerned them and led them to form IFANCA.They set up a halal certification process in-house closely based on certification models of other food certification companiesorganic, kosher, etc. It all begins with filling out a comprehensive application with details about the products complexity and production volume size. IFANCA staff can quickly provide a time and price estimate for completion of the rigorous process.Using the same example of chocolate, Mujahed Khan, one of IFANCAs in-house food technologists explained to me the time difference it would take to review cacao powder and a chocolate bar. The bar of chocolate would have gone through many more stages of