Halal food caters to modern people's new requirement of healthy food with its supreme qualities, such as "green, purity and non-pollution" and characterized dietary culture. It is not only endeared by Muslims, but also very popular among other ethnic groups. With the increasing requirement of Halal foods and products, the development of Halal foods and products industry has a bright perspective.

- The present international market capacity and development status

There are over 1.3 billion Muslims in the world. The market requirement of Halal food and products keeps growing annually and has a spectacular prospect. Not only the Muslims rely on Halal foods, but also people from other ethnic groups have strong requirement of Halal food. Among them, 22 member countries of Arab Union are giant Halal food consuming markets, and also the main exporting destinations of Chinese Halal food.

Statistics from China Islamic Association shows that, as to Halal food, the amount of international trade in 2006 has exceeded 2.1 trillion USD. Experts in related subjects estimated that the growth would be above 20% this year, excluding other daily consuming products, such as garment, decoration and crafts etc.

It is said that the development of Halal food industry is keeping 10% growth rate in China. In 2006, the trade amount of Halal food in China was over 2.1 billion USD. In the past three quarters of this year, it has maintained a rapid growth momentum.

However, compared with global market capacity, the trade amount of Chinese Halal food only accounts for 0.1% of the total. Especially in the area of export, the export amount is less than 100 million USD, which takes a very little portion of the total.

So far, a fair number of Chinese companies are producing Halal food and products, but what are the reasons for the lag development of this industry? Authorities point out that it is mainly because that these companies are small, weak, scattered and lacking of well-known brands.

Introduced by relevant experts, most of the Halal food and products companies mainly produce beef and mutton and relevant by-products, garments and characterized crafts. This industry mainly concentrates in northwest, northeast, Henan Province, Guangdong Province and other Muslim intensively inhabited area. In addition, most of Chinese Halal food companies have small scales, lower extent of deep processing and precision, low added value and no centralized advantages, causing it difficulty for them to produce international prestigious brands.

- The advantages for developing Halal food and products industry in China

Despite the lag of industry development, the Halal food and products industry still get some advantages.

1 Time-honored dietary culture

There are 22 million Muslims in China, with a history of 1200 years producing Halal food and products. Rich and brilliant dietary culture has been created by Chinese Muslim for a long time. By living in harmony and communicating with Han culture and other ethnic cultures, Chinese Muslim actively absorbed excellent elements from them, thus it owns unique advantages in the fields of product characteristics and innovation compared with other solely Muslim cultured countries. 

2 Abundant Halal food raw materials

On the vast territory of China, there are the fertile Northeast Grasslands and the Inner Mongolian Grasslands, the nature and non-pollution Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Grasslands, teeming with world-class grass fodder. Abundant grass resource can guarantees the supply of Halal food raw materials. In addition, the quality of Halal food raw materials including beef and mutton produced on the grasslands can totally satisfy the raw materials standard formulated by International Halal Food Qualification Institutions.

3 The sustainable and rapid development of China’s economy and the West Development Policy have benefited the people in Muslim regions. As an ethic group good at learning and comparing, Chinese Muslims have gained new understandings of commercialization. By means of attending international exhibitions and other activities, they noticed potential business opportunities and eagerly expected to accumulate wealth by developing their own cultural resources. 

4 The constant expanding of cooperation between Muslim countries and China offers a wide developing space for Halal food and products industry. In recent years, the business and trade exchanges between Arabian countries and China have increased significantly. Only last year, the total trade amount between China and Arabian countries has exceeded 66 billion USD, increasing by 30 times over the last 15 years.