Socio-Technical Systems Engineering Perspectives Towards a South African Halaal Blockchain System

Introduction

Our increasingly inter-connected world has made technology an integral part of human life. Conceptualising technological systems without paying due attention to the social dimension of how these systems will be utilised is risky and may lead to unsustainable designs (Baxter & Sommerville, 2011). This motivates for conceptualising modern and future systems in a socio-technical manner that considers the complex interactions between humans, machines and broader society (Baxter & Sommerville, 2011; Sony & Naik, 2020). Hence, it is important to study systems that are part of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) using a socio-technical approach.

An emerging technology in the context of the 4IR is blockchain technology. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that has been proposed for supply chains in multiple industries, due to its ability to improve transparency and traceability (Ali et al., 2021; Dutta et al., 2020). Use-cases for this technology have been proposed towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Medaglia & Damsgaard, 2020; The United Nations General Assembly, 2015), particularly in agricultural supply chain contexts that help monitor sustainable farming practices and promote food security (Sylvester, 2019; Tripoli & Schmidhuber, 2020).

The proposed adoption of blockchain technology for monitoring agricultural supply chains has an interesting implication for Muslim communities. The religion of Islam states that followers may only consume foods which are Halaal (alternatively spelt as Halal), a term which loosely translates to “permissible by Shariah (Islamic) Law” and mostly find application in food products derived from animals (Azam & Abdullah, 2020; Disastraa et al., 2020; Khan & Haleem, 2016; Tayob, 2016). It has also been noted that there has been an increasing interest in Halaal foods by the non-Muslim community, who recognise Halaal status as a symbol of food safety, quality and lifestyle choice (Mathew et al., 2014; Rejeb et al., 2021). The conditions of Halaal cover all the business operations throughout the value chain, including packaging, marketing, manufacturing, logistics, maintenance of premises, slaughtering and animal treatment when farming (Azam & Abdullah, 2020; Tayob, 2016, 2020). The Halaal supply chain system consists of a complex network of agricultural supply chain role-players and Halaal accreditation bodies. Within the agricultural supply chain, role-players include farmers, producers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers and consumers (Chandra et al., 2019). The accreditation bodies are responsible for auditing that the supply chain role-players are adhering to the conditions for Halaal certification. This encompasses the monitoring of processes at different points of the supply chain, verifying that activities are conducted according to prescribed religious standards and authorising the use of a Halaal logo on packaging to label and communicate the Halaal status of the product to consumers (Tayob, 2016). People, religion and culture form the roots of this complex system due to the religious nature of Halaal. Moreover, the scale of the Halaal meat industry requires the use of technology and infrastructure to support business operations and the accreditation process. Hence, the Halaal supply chain has both social and technical elements and is hence conducive towards being studied using socio-technical system constructs. Globally, there have been numerous reports of fraud and malpractice by businesses claiming that their products are Halaal (Fuseini et al., 2017; Rafudeen, 2013; Ruslan et al., 2018). Consequently, trust in the Halaal accreditation process has been impaired and integrity of the accreditation process has been questioned (Kamisah et al., 2018). This has led to the contemporary research into the application of blockchain technology for Halaal supply chains, which is termed a Halaal blockchain system. This nomenclature is graphically illustrated in Figure 1.