BPJPH Head Decree 57/2021: Five SJPH Criteria for Business Actors

For business actors, the question that comes up most often is not simply how to register for halal certification. What is more decisive is what must actually be running inside the company before the inspection is carried out. This is where the Decree of the Head of BPJPH Number 57 of 2021 concerning the Criteria for the Halal Product Assurance System (SJPH) comes into play.

This regulation is the main reference for implementing SJPH on the business actor side. Its contents are not a list of forms, but five criteria that must be built and carried out. Kepka 57/2021 was later amended by Kepka 20/2023, so business actors need to ensure that the reference being used is the latest version.

Five criteria that must be running

The five criteria are commitment and responsibility, materials, halal product processes, products, and monitoring and evaluation. This arrangement shows that SJPH does not stop at the selection of materials. It demands a system that runs from management policy to routine supervision.

The commitment and responsibility criteria concern halal policy and the personnel who carry it out. The materials criteria concern the origin and status of every material that enters. The process criteria cover the production flow and facilities. The product criteria address the final result. The monitoring and evaluation criteria ensure that everything remains maintained, not merely correct once during an audit.

Practical consequence: materials whose origin is not singular

The materials criteria are the part that most often consumes time. This is because many materials do not have a single status. Their status depends on the source.

Lecithin (E322) generally comes from soybeans and is therefore halal, but some is produced from egg yolk or animal fat. Lecithin is widely used in chocolate, margarine, bread, powdered milk products, and baby food. The alternative clearly stated on the label is soy lecithin or sunflower lecithin.

Another example is pepsin, a protein-digesting enzyme from pig or cattle stomach, which is used in the cheese and pharmaceutical industries. Its substitutes can be pepsin from halal-certified cattle stomach or microbial protease enzymes.

There are also stearic acid and magnesium stearate (E470, E572), anti-caking materials in tablets and powders that can come from palm oil or animal fat. Halal-certified plant-based versions generally come from palm oil. These materials appear in medicinal tablets and supplements, instant drink powders, and solid powder cosmetics.

Not all materials are risky. Yeast is generally halal because it is a fermentation microorganism. What needs to be checked is its growth medium. Yeast with a halal-certified plant-based growth medium has generally become the standard in modern industry. Yeast is used in bread, non-alcoholic beer, fermented products, and packaged household instant yeast.

This pattern is important to understand. What determines the status is not the name of the material, but its origin and the documents accompanying it.

Where the aspects of impartiality and competence come in

On the other hand, LPH accreditation refers to SNI ISO/IEC 17065:2012, the standard of requirements for bodies certifying products, processes, and services. This standard governs impartiality, confidentiality, personnel competence, complaint and appeal management, and accountability.

For business actors, the consequences are practical. Inspections are carried out by a party bound by rules of impartiality and confidentiality. You have the right to organized handling of complaints and appeals. This also means that inspection results rest on personnel competence, not on loose assessment.

Link to product obligations

The SJPH criteria do not stand alone. The obligation for halal certification for certain product groups is set through the Decree of the Minister of Religious Affairs Number 748 of 2021, which was later amended by KMA 944/2024. These two references need to be read together, because one determines which products are mandatory, while the other determines which system must be running.

It should also be noted that the determination of halalness is the authority of the MUI Fatwa Commission or the Halal Product Fatwa Committee. Certificates are only issued by BPJPH. Therefore, building a well-organized SJPH does not mean guaranteeing the result, but rather ensuring the company is ready for inspection and able to maintain its system.

What is most often overlooked

The monitoring and evaluation criteria are often regarded as a formality. Yet this is precisely where SJPH is tested. A good halal policy can lose its meaning if the material registry is not updated, critical points are not supervised, and internal audits are not carried out. Changes in suppliers or formulations are the most vulnerable moments.

To help organize all these criteria in one place, IndoHalal.id provides an SJPH platform that covers halal policy, material registry, critical points, internal audits, and BPJPH certification readiness.