Countries across the world, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, have boosted income from food exports by joining a growing market via introducing standards for "halal" food.
In Turkey, on the other hand, exporters lament that concerns over ideological implications of introducing halal food standards result in Turkey's missing out on the market, the potential customers of which number 1.6 billion worldwide.
Introducing a halal foodstuffs standard in 2004, Malaysia has managed to secure a market share of $2.1 trillion worldwide. Seeing the potential, even non-Muslim countries such as Vietnam have started to take important steps to produce foodstuffs in conformity with the standard. The Turkish Standards Institute (TSE) began work on introducing halal standards two years ago, but with political factors hampering efforts, work ahs not been concluded as of yet. Thus Turkey currently lacks both a standard and certificate-issuing agencies.