“Our mantra for the past couple of years has been to expand the value of our products to beyond just being halal,” Issa told NutraIngredients-USA.
NoorVitamins, which is a division of Long Island, NY-based Noor Pharmaceuticals, basically invented the Halal supplements category in the US when it launched in 2011, Issa said. The certification revolves around Muslim dietary laws, which prohibit pork products, alcohol, and contact with blood as well as other considerations. It also ensures that any animals used within the process are treated in a humane fashion under Islamic principles, Issa said.
Kosher certification is similar in some aspects, but differs in an important respect in that a rabbi must be present at some point in the process, raising the cost considerably. In the case of halal, the certification process is mostly document-based with periodic site visits, much like other certifications within the dietary supplement industry, Issa said.
Being certified as Kosher has to some degree conferred a halo of purity and quality around those products, even if relatively few US households adhere strictly to Jewish dietary laws. Issa said the hope is that a Halal positioning, driving as it does toward similar aims of purity and quality, will someday confer a similar halo, even though he admitted that at the moment, given the current world political situation, a Halal certification can be politically sensitive.
“A lot of big brands won’t go there because they don’t want to offend some of their target consumers. It gives an opportunity for a smaller, more nimble competitor,” he said.
Huge global opportunity
There are more than 5 million Jewish residents in the US according to the most recent estimates, a population second only to that of Israel itself. The size of the US Muslim population is a little more difficult to estimate, driven as it is by recent immigration. Issa put that population at somewhere between 2 million to 4 million, whereas the Pew Research Center estimated earlier this year that about 3.3 million Muslims were living in the US in 2015. About 10% of recent legal immigrants to the US are Muslim, and Muslims will be the largest non-Christian religious group in the US by about 2035, Pew estimates. But there is little disagreement about the potential size of the overall market.
“We own 90% of the US Halal-certified market for supplements,” Issa said. “And worldwide we own about 75%. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide.”
The latest NoorVitamin product, a high potency omega-3 fish oil, speaks to some of the intricacies of Halal certification. Just as with some other certification schemes, such as non-GMO or organic, the thorniest questions revolve not around the major constituents of a supplement product but around the excipients and processing aids. The fish oil was not the issue, what you might put it into was.
“The gelatin used for the capsules is what is usually sourced from non-Halal sources,” Issa said.
The new product is being touted for the purity of its source, the cold-water fisheries of Peru. The product features a 60% omega-3 concentration, delivering 800 mg of EPA and 400 mg of DHA in a two gram serving.
“We at Noor really created this category,” Issa said. “The Halal piece is an important element for us but it is not the only value. We focus on producing a product that will be attractive to all consumers, that is produced in a GMP-certified facility. Our growth is stemming mostly from the non-Halal sector, and we believe that is coming from continuing to produce the highest quality products we can.”