Organizers go full halal for SEA Games delegates

Organizers of the 30th Southeast Asian Games announced on Wednesday that they will serve halal-certified food throughout the biennial meet.

"We opted to go for full halal for the SEA Games because we wanted to make way for our Muslim brothers and sisters to say that we care about them," SEA Games executive chef Bruce said at a news conference.

Lim said preparations for the halal meals were challenging since only a few hotels in the country were halal-certified.

"It was tough for a country that's not primarily a Muslim country or a no-pork eating country to execute this," Lim said.

"If you noticed some of the hotels are not halal-certified so what we did was we brought in third party contractors, who are halal-certified, to help us," he added.

FULL COVERAGE: 30th Southeast Asian Games on GMA News Online

Lim also explained that going full halal was for the safety of the athletes.

"We wanted to be fair with everyone and I think that people who do consume pork can live for 15 days without it," Lim said.

"If they wanted to eat pork, they can always leave the venue and eat somewhere else but for our Muslim brothers and sisters who want to make sure that they had something here that they can consume and that's safe for them, that was our main concern," he added.

A Muslim media officer with the Indonesian Men’s Football Team has said that organizers failed to make a distinction between halal and non-halal food in the meals that were served them. He said this caused him to accidentally eat pork.

Gatot Widardo said that this lack of foresight had caused him to accidentally violate his faith's dietary rules.

“Until now, they [have] not improved yet. So we hope [in] the next days they can improve on this and separate the halal food and the non-halal food,” Widardo said on Tuesday. —NB, GMA News