An Act Requiring All Branches of Popular Chains of Fast Food Restaurants Operating in the Bangmoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao to Properly Label Their Food Products and Condiments as “with Pork” to Distinguish Them from Food Products and Condiments Which Are Non-Pork, Without Pork or Without Pork by-Products, Appropriating Funds Therefor and for Other Purposes

This is the Bangsamoro Fast Food Labeling Act, and it does something none of the other food bills does: it names the companies.

Section 3 applies the Act to fast food restaurants "including but not limited to Jollibee, McDonalds, Chowking, Greenwich Pizza, Mang Inasal, KFC, Goldilocks, Red Ribbon, Pizza Hut, and Shakeys", whether inside or outside malls, operating anywhere in the region. A fast food restaurant is then defined by 6 characteristics — quick service, food already prepared or quickly preparable, disposable wrappings and utensils, preparation encouraging consumption off the premises, orders not taken at the table, and an asset size of ₱5,000,000 or above.

The labelling rule has 2 halves and the first is the important one. Food items and condiments are *presumed not to contain* pork, lard or any by-product unless labelled otherwise, and the bill states the consequence expressly: "The lack of label is equivalent to a claim on the absence of the aforementioned ingredients." Anything that does contain pork must be labelled "WITH PORK" or words to that effect — on advertisements and on promotional and marketing materials distributed anywhere in the region, in the menus in every branch, and in the eMenus of online food platforms, with GrabFood and foodpanda named. Management is responsible for ensuring the label is printed or shown conspicuously enough to be read and understood by an ordinary person.

Prohibited acts are failing to label a pork-containing item in advertisements, materials, menus or eMenus; falsely claiming a food item or condiment contains no pork; and violating the implementing rules. Penalties escalate: ₱10,000 to ₱20,000 for a first offence, ₱20,000 to ₱50,000 for a second, ₱50,000 to ₱100,000 for a third, imposed on the owner or, for a corporate entity, on the directors, officers, employees or persons responsible. On a third or later offence the Council may recommend suspension of operations for up to 6 months, or cancellation of licences or permits, to the local government concerned.

A Fast Food Labeling Council enforces it, chaired by the Minister of Trade, Investments and Tourism with the Minister of Health as vice-chair and the interior ministry among its members.

The policy is consumer education and protection, and the mechanism chosen is disclosure rather than prohibition: the Act regulates the labelling, display and advertisement of food products and condiments by popular fast food chains in the region.

The practical problem is specific. National fast food chains operate standard menus across the Philippines, and a Muslim customer in Cotabato City ordering from the same board as a customer in Manila has no way of knowing which items contain pork or lard. The bill does not ask the chains to change what they sell; it asks them to say what is in it, in every place a customer might look — including the delivery apps.

The default presumption is the legally interesting move and it is easy to read past. Most labelling statutes require a disclosure and punish its absence. This one goes further: it declares that the absence of a label is itself a positive claim that the food contains no pork. That converts every unlabelled item on every menu into a representation the chain has made, which means a mislabelled item is not merely an omission but a false claim — and it is what allows the second prohibited act, falsely claiming an item contains no pork, to bite without anyone having to prove the chain said anything at all.

Naming the 10 companies in the statute is unusual and cuts 2 ways. It removes any argument about coverage — Jollibee cannot contend it is not a fast food restaurant within the meaning of the Act — and it dates the law to the brands trading in 2023, while the "including but not limited to" and the 6-characteristic definition are what carry it forward. The ₱5,000,000 asset threshold is the real line, and it deliberately exempts the small local eatery, which is the sensible half of the design: a family carinderia cannot maintain compliant eMenu labelling across delivery platforms.

Extending the duty to eMenus and naming GrabFood and foodpanda is the provision that makes this bill current rather than a decade behind the market. A consumer ordering through an app never sees the in-store menu board, and a labelling law confined to premises would have missed the fastest-growing way food is sold. Few statutes in this registry engage with the platform economy at all.

What the bill does not do is address halal more broadly, and that is a deliberate narrowing. Pork is the clearest case and the easiest to label; the harder questions — slaughter method, cross-contamination, gelatine and other derivatives — are exactly what Bill No. 10's certification scheme and Bill No. 60's prohibited acts are built for. Read together the 3 bills are close to a complete scheme, and taken one at a time each has an obvious gap.

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.