Egyptians' Perception of Halal Food Requirements Before and After The COVID-19 Pandemic:

Kassem, Aly ZeinElabdeen; El-Kady, Alaa Moustafa; El-Farouk, Aly Omar; Abdallah, Mostafa Saad; Elshafei, Ahmed Mohammed

doi:10.21608/sjas.2024.289456.1423

Egyptians' Perception of Halal Food Requirements Before and After The COVID-19 Pandemic: "Social Media Interactive Research-SMIR": A New Approach

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Center for Agricultural Planning and Development, Institute of National Planning

² Food Technology and Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Egypt

³ Secretary of Fatwa, Dar' Al-Ifta, Egypt

⁴ Institute of African and Nile Researches and Studies

⁵ Central Laboratory for Aquaculture Research - Agricultural Research Center- Egypt

10.21608/sjas.2024.289456.1423

Abstract

This paper aims at investigating the perception of the Egyptian consumer of halal food requirements before and after COVID-19, utilizing the new "Social Media Interaction Research" (SMIR) approach. A "Google from" questionnaire was designed, and the initial potential respondents were invited via the principal author's Facebook account to file the questionnaire form and join a closed Facebook group to present and discuss the initial results of the study. At the two stages of the study, before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, 302 and 338 questionnaires were filled out. Furthermore,
at the first stage of the study, the respondents were allowed to participate with their comments through a focus group interview of 24 experts that was live-streamed online on the study's Facebook group. To our knowledge, this is the first qualitative study of its kind that utilizes the so-called "SMIR" approach in collecting, validating, and processing data, where the majority of the study's respondents have interacted with the authors throughout its stages via social media. The findings of this study reveal that the levels of Egyptian consumer awareness before and after COVID-19 were not affected in the case of four food groups out of seven under study. Furthermore, the consumer’s awareness of halal food principles in beverages and meat is higher than in other food groups such as milk, fish, honey, eggs, and cereals.

Keywords

Main Subjects