Halal issue in blood plasma-based food products

The development of the food industry hastily grows along with the development of science and technology. This is inevitable due to the demand and supply. However, several issues exist in food technology from the perspective of Islamic law. As an example, prominent discussions include meat culture, the inclusion of non-slaughtered animals in meat product manufacturing and blood plasma usage in food. In the context of this article, blood plasma has been employed in the production of foods that can serve a variety of functions, such as egg replacers, natural colour enhancers, emulsifiers, fat replacers, curing agents, and proteinase inhibitors. However, there is a strong taboo in Islam against using blood as a dietary ingredient. Thus, this article studied the usage of blood plasma in food according to Islamic law. This article is a qualitative study using the library study approach and inductive, deductive, and comparative content analysis of various written sources to achieve the identified main objective. This study concluded that blood plasma is haram and cannot be used in food manufacture based on istidlal nas, legal maxims and principles of maqasid Al-syariah. Thus, further study is needed to find an alternative to replace food plasma usage in food products.