Halal Food Sustainability between Certification and Blockchain: A Review

Islam is the second-largest religion on a global scale. All around the world Muslims are estimated to comprise more than 1.9 billion people. Therefore, the demand for Halal commodities is expected to reach a high growth rate: thus, it is crucial to increase its global market’s reliability and traceability. Based on these grounds, the scope of this paper is to assess Halal food sustainability, examining the barriers and opportunities offered by the certification and blockchain tools. To this purpose, the authors carried out an integrative literature review, selecting 54 contributions in the Web of Science platform. Despite several limitations, such as the lack of a standardized framework or universally accepted and reliable certifying authorities, the implementation of blockchain technology has emerged as an interesting instrument to increase the trustworthiness and traceability of Halal foods. This tool could also help the development of protocols and standard procedures, ensuring hygienic and permitted products that may boost food safety and security. Besides, the enhancement of the Halal certification and the blockchain tool, even if several efforts are required in terms of innovation and cooperation by local authorities, industrial associations and leading consumers, could enhance fair trade, ethical business, green animal breeding and environmental economics, and hence sustainable development

A competitive approach for the reduction of unsaturated compounds based on fungal ene-reductases

The aim of this work was to select potential biocatalysts for the reduction of unsaturated compounds. The ability of Gliomastix masseei, Mucor circinelloides, Mucor plumbeus, Penicillium citrinum and Syncephalastrum racemosum to convert structurally diverse substrates was tested, also considering the role of substituents linked to the C=C bond on the process efficiency. All the tested fungi expressed ene-reductase activity when tested with several types of compounds; the ketone derivative was the best substrate, followed by the nitroalkene and the unsaturated aldehyde, whereas the ester was the most recalcitrant to bioreduction. The results highlighted the potential of Mucor circinelloides MUT 44 and Mucor plumbeus MUT 2769 as versatile whole-cell systems; fast and efficient reduction was obtained using these biocatalysts for most of the compounds. Comparative analysis of the substrate spectrum was performed for three Mucor circinelloides strains, and reaction rates and timings were shown to vary, indicating a strong physiological diversity of ene-reductase activity at the intraspecific level