Awareness of the complexity in the global food chain, combined with several major halal food issues and scandals, are an impetus for major changes in the halal food control system in Malaysia. Malaysia holds a special position in the global halal market as the first country that assigns a government agency to regulate its halal matters and certification. This article describes and discusses the system for halal food control in Malaysia as framed by five important components for an effective national food control system: halal food legislation; halal food management control; inspection; laboratory; and education, communication, and training. Significant improvement has been made on the system; however, a few issues and challenges persist.

The purpose of this study was to assess the consumers' food safety knowledge and its determinants. The analysis was based on data collected through a cross-sectional survey in East Malaysia, which described the knowledge about personal hygiene, food borne disease symptoms, high-risk foods, cross-contamination, and temperature control held by Sibu-based consumers. Up to 99.5% of consumers correctly answered the question on hand hygiene in food handling. However, only 23.3% had a detailed knowledge of the temperature effect on bacterial growth in food. The level of food safety knowledge differed by gender, age, education level, number of children and food preparation frequency. The logistic regression model used for this data found a high level of food safety knowledge among tertiary graduates (OR = 42.26; 95% CI: 9.97, 179.06). It also highlighted the importance of food safety knowledge as an effort to control food borne diseases (FBD), by focusing on consumer food handling in the home and how to extent the benefits of food safety education to the whole society.

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This study employed the extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) to predict the intention of adult consumers towards safe food handling at home. A self-administered survey was distributed to a total of 623 respondents who lived in the Sibu district, Malaysia and analyzed the data using the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique. The empirical results revealed that consumers' attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavior control were statistically significant and positively linked to the intention of safe food handling. Furthermore, the results indicated that the main predictor of consumer safe food handling intention was subjective norm. This study confirmed that food safety knowledge had a positive impact on consumer's attitude. From a practical standpoint, this study provided justification in highlighting the roles of family that encouraged consumers to perform safe food handling at home.

The role of organizational influencers on foodservice employees' motivation to follow safe handling practices was explored. Data were collected from 311 employees with no supervisory responsibilities working in commercial and noncommercial foodservices. Employees identified level of agreement with eight organizational influencers that motivate them to follow safe food handling practices. Data were analyzed to determine if differences in motivation by influencers existed among employees with different demographic characteristics. Age, years of foodservice experience and work status impacted motivations of both commercial and non-commercial employees. Future research could test a comprehensive measure of organizational influencers on employees' safe food handling practices.