An Act Requiring Muslim Restaurants and Food Establishments Within the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) to Secure Halal Certification and Providing Penalties for Violations Thereof

This requires every Muslim restaurant and food establishment in the region to hold a halal certificate, renewed annually.

Anyone covered — sole proprietor, partnership, cooperative, association, corporation or other juridical entity, franchised or not, running a Muslim restaurant or eatery — must secure certification from an accrediting body before the end of January each year. The accrediting bodies are those recognised by the Department of Trade and Industry's Philippine Accreditation Bureau, the Islamic Da'wah Council of the Philippines and the Halal Development Institute of the Philippines among them. An application must be evaluated within 15 days, the result is a pass or a fail, and it holds for 1 year. The certificate must be posted where customers can see it and indicated in the menu. The application fee is capped at ₱500.

Section 7 sets the substantive standard: the food must contain no component of animals prohibited under Shariah or not slaughtered according to it, no ingredient considered haram, no preparation on equipment contaminated with haram ingredients, and complete separation from haram food throughout preparation, processing, storage and transport. Those requirements sit alongside the existing Philippine standards, and accrediting bodies may impose stricter ones.

The penalties reach into national criminal law. Violations ground cancellation of the certificate and may lead to suspension of operations for up to 6 months or cancellation of business permits. Falsely claiming halal status constitutes false description or representation under Article 189 of the Revised Penal Code; falsifying a certificate constitutes falsification by a private individual under Article 172, carrying prisión correccional in its medium and maximum periods and a fine of up to ₱1,000,000. Operating without any certificate at all draws ₱500 a day until compliance. Existing certificates may be used until December of the year the Act takes effect.

The explanatory note argues from the region's character — as a Muslim region, the Bangsamoro Government regulates the business establishments within it, and restaurants are among them — and cites research on halal principles as a food safety measure rather than only a religious one.

The bill also records where it came from, in a footnote on its own face. It began as an entry by Ibrahim D. Pendatu, Santanina D. Datu-Imam and Farhaida H. Datu-Imam in a bill and resolution drafting contest run by the offices of MP Ampatuan and MP Mawallil to engage youth and communities in producing legislative measures, with revisions by MP Ampatuan's office.

The pass-or-fail design is the cleverest thing in this bill and also its hardest edge. An establishment does not merely obtain a certificate or fail to; it receives a result, valid for a year, which it must post where customers can see it and state in its menu. A failed certificate displayed in the window is a far stronger sanction than a fine, and the bill reaches it without any enforcement machinery of its own. Whether a small eatery in a rural municipality survives publishing its own failure is the question the drafting does not ask.

The ₱500 fee cap is the provision that shows the bill was written for the economy it applies to. Halal certification in commercial practice is expensive, and a mandatory scheme priced at market rates would close small establishments rather than improve them. Capping the fee at ₱500 makes the requirement survivable; it also means the accrediting bodies must inspect within 15 days for a sum that will not cover a serious inspection, which is a tension the bill leaves unresolved.

Routing the penalties through the Revised Penal Code rather than creating regional offences is an efficient piece of drafting and a fragile one. Articles 172 and 189 are national provisions on falsification and false representation, and invoking them gives the bill real teeth — up to ₱1,000,000 and imprisonment — without the region legislating new crimes. It also makes enforcement depend on national prosecutors taking up a regional regulatory breach.

The footnote crediting 3 named citizens is worth pausing on. Legislatures rarely record where a text came from, and a filed bill that names the contest entrants who drafted it — and says the sponsoring office revised it — documents a form of public participation that is otherwise invisible. Two other bills in this registry carry the same kind of footnote: Bill No. 155 on Lake Lanao and Bill No. 94 on the welfare of minors.

Three bills in this registry regulate what the region eats, and they pick 3 different instruments for the same problem. Bill No. 10 licenses: every Muslim restaurant must hold an annual halal certificate. Bill No. 60 polices the lie: no certificate is required, but misrepresenting food as halal becomes an offence with a long schedule of prohibited acts. Bill No. 164 discloses: it does not regulate halal at all, instead requiring named fast food chains to label anything containing pork. All 3 are at Second Reading, Committee Stage, and none of the 3 has become law.