Ismail Abd Latif

A comparative analysis of global Halal certification requirements

The aim of this study is to compare the various Halal certification bodies around the world based on the criteria for Halal certification. As the process of awarding Halal certificates varies among the certification bodies, it is pertinent to identify the differences between these selected certification bodies to gauge the gap existing among them. This study will also identify the position of JAKIM, which is the main Halal certification body in Malaysia, among the other main certification bodies around the world. Nine categories were identified in awarding Halal certification to companies. Comparative analysis was then used to see the differences that exist between these certification bodies. The results of the analysis indicate that, based on the nine categories identified, JAKIM is the strictest body in awarding Halal certification to companies.

Enhancing Poultry Industry Competitiveness: Consumer Perspective on Chicken Meat Quality Based on Sensory Characteristics

The increasing demand for chicken meat has caused producers to increase their productivity through enhanced production techniques. Further increase in demand for quality meat products has been predicted in the country. This study seeks to investigate factors that influence consumer perception toward chicken meat quality. Face-to-face interviews were carried out with 569 consumers at selected shopping malls located in Klang Valley areas. The majority of the respondents perceived quality as an important criterion for buying decisions. The finding revealed that nine factors have influenced consumer perception on meat quality, namely color, size, springiness, chicken aroma, fatty/oily taste, sweetness, visible fat, tenderness, and fibrousness. Among these factors, tenderness was found to be the most important criterion that influenced consumer preference toward chicken meat quality during buying decisions. Good production practices and proper marketing strategies are among recommendations to poultry industry players toward fulfilling consumer demand for good quality chicken meat.

Profit Efficiency among Cotton Farmers: A Cobb-Douglass Stochastic Frontier Production Function Analysis

Based on Stochastic Frontier Profit Function that assumed Cobb-Douglass specification form, a multiple regression model was estimated using a cross-sectional data obtained from a sample of 349 cotton farmers by means of a multi-stage and simple random sampling techniques. Maximum likelihood estimates of the specified profit model explained that profit efficiency of the producers varied between 67.1% and 98.1% with mean 91.3% implying that an estimated 18.7% of the profit is lost due to a combination of technical and allocative inefficiencies in cotton farming production. In addition, results from the technical inefficiency model showed that age, education, farming experience, credit access, extension visit and marital status were significant factors influencing profit inefficiency, revealing that profit inefficiency in cotton production could be shortened significantly with improvement in the level of the aforementioned socio-economics characteristics of the sampled farmers. The overtone of these results is that, it would give more insight to policy makers for further improvements in productivity by given more emphasis to exploiting the technical efficiency ?gap? through adaptive research, farmer education and improved input supply.

Factors Influencing Consumer’s Intention towards Online Grocery Shopping

Online platform nowadays has started to replace the traditional market and require consumers to change their buying habits and patterns extensively. Thus, the trend of having grocery delivered to the doorstep has been introduced to Malaysian consumers especially who lives in urban area. Previous studies have shown that online groceries are not consistently purchased by the consumers due to several reasons such as inconsistent quality and lack of sensory characteristics. However, there are still number of consumers who continuously shops groceries through online platform. Thus, the aim of this study is to determine factors influencing consumer’s intention to shop groceries online. The primary data were collected using structured questionnaire in the form of online survey with 521 respondents in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive analysis and factor analysis. The findings of the study showed that majority of the online grocery shoppers are female with the age ranged between 26-35 years old. Besides that, results from factor analysis revealed that perceived usefulness, satisfaction, perceived risk, perceived information accessibility and perceived ease of use are among factors that influenced consumer’s intention towards online grocery shopping. Therefore, this study can be used to assist online grocery retailers to formulate effective strategies to gain more consumers’ confidence to make use of online grocery shopping.

The Role and Importance of the Transactions Costs Theory in Agricultural Contracting Area: an Appraisal of Selected Empirical Studies

Formal contractual arrangements cover a considerable share of globe agricultural production. Agricultural contracts can have many beneficial effects.They can help farmers manage price and production risks, thus encouraging more efficient use of farm and processing capacities. But contracts can also have less benign effects. They can introduce new and unexpected risks for farmers—in some circumstances, they can extend a buyer’s market power—and they can effect fundamental changes in how farming is organized and carried out.In this our article we address transaction cost theory (TCT) in some details as a theoretical framework in study of methodology of agreements and contracts,for proving the role and importance of this theory on agriculture contracting area based on eight empirical studies on assessing transaction costs in different farms. Main finding is there are diverse opinions on the applicability of the transaction costs theory in agricultural contracting scope of different management decision-making processes. These opinions developed over a long period of time following continuous improvement on the application of the theory in solving of the outsourcing business problems. These studies also proved that transaction costs are difficult to measure and there is no standard procedure to assess transaction costs, but they can and should be estimated because they are important cost elements in the decision-making process concerning the choice of contract for different outsourcing agricultural production stages.

Transactions Costs Analysis of Agricultural Machinery Hiring Decision in Iraq

The Spirit of the Chinese People was written in 1915, from historical view, China was undergoing great social changes in all aspects at that time. The book written by Ku Hung-Ming is considered to be the first work in modern China to introduce Chinese people to the westerners. He shows deep love, passion and pride of Chinese culture in this book, intending to change the prejudice towards Chinese people of the westerners. Cultural confidence of Ku Hung-Ming can also be sensed greatly in his great work, which is of great value nowadays. This paper mainly demonstrates cultural confidence of Chinese people conveyed in this book by Ku Hung-Ming, some personal reflections are also discussed in this paper to show the author’s understanding of Chinese cultural confidence.Anne of Green Gables, one of Canada’s best known children’s books, has gained popularity all over the world. Anne has become a household name in the children world. The paper analyses the image of Anne in Chinese readers’ eyes: a romantic, imaginative, loyal, self-spirited and loveable girl. The author of this paper also reviews a brief history of Canadian literature’s acceptance in China, and offers some constructive suggestions for the effective popularization of Canadian literature in China. Key words: Anne; Canadian literature; popularization; children’s literaturePresently, most students of normal universities know nothing about music knowledge such as music score at all, and have no musical knowledge and culture. This is a common problem existing in many Chinese normal universities. Surveys, however, show the students are fond of and thirst for learning music knowledge. Thus, universities and related institutions have been laying stress on how to cultivate and improve the music knowledge and culture of students of normal universities. In view of this, this paper aims to research the problems in music curriculum design of normal universities, and put forward corresponding countermeasures, with a hope to give assistance to related universities in music teaching. The theory knowledge of music and vocality accomplishments is one of the basic knowledge and accomplishments that modern talents should have. Besides music majors, education majors also should be offered music education, so as to make up the deficiency of musical knowledge and culture of Chinese musical talents, and comprehensively improve students’ musical skills (Kong & Jin, 2014). There are many problems in music education curriculum design of normal universities. About this, this paper aims to analyze the problems, and put forward suggestions on related curriculum design.Frye’s theory of archetypal meaning includes the apocalyptic and the demonic imagery. The apocalyptic and demonic imagery will be applied to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which is stuffed with symbols. Through the demonic imagery, the theme of the novel, people naturally revert to cruelty, savagery and barbarism is clearly revealed. The apocalyptic imagery gives us some hope, though.This essay is devoted to a review of Fotos and Ellis’ (1991) article about using task-based approach in teaching grammar. The choice of the article is based on the fact that it provides a good start for a discussion of the implementation of task-based approach to grammar teaching. First, a summary of the main points in the article is presented. The second part provides a discussion focusing on how the issue of teaching grammar communicatively has been tackled by other researchers. The last part is an attempt to draw some implications of task-based approach in teaching grammar for the Moroccan context.Based on the cultivating mode of special talents and cultivating target of professional talents in the higher vocational colleges, through imitating major cluster construction idea, so as to promote the efficient launch of thematic practical teaching, this paper will conduct relatively deep analysis and discussion on how to improve the practical teaching effectiveness of ideological and political course in the higher vocational colleges.As more and more Chinese farmers are moving to bigger cities, the education problems of migrant students become more and more severe in China. Based on the analysis on the current situation of compulsory education of migrant students in X City, and comparing with the successful solutions of migrant education problems in the United States, this paper offers some possible suggestions to schools in X City on solving the compulsory education problems of migrant students.This paper attempts to offer teachers effective and convenient models in explaining several basic concepts in translation theories to students in translation classes. Four models borrowed from the discipline of cognition are prototype, cognition domain, salience and the three-dimensional cognition mode. The concepts explained in this paper included translation variation, extra-linguistic knowledge for translation, translation criteria and un-translatability, all of which are among the primary concerns for students in translation classes. Key Words: translation concepts; translation theories; cognitive modelsOn the eve of the thirtieth Teachers’ Day, President Xi Jinping visited the Beijing Normal University, and gave an important speech on the forum of the teachers and students from Beijing Normal University: Be a Good Teacher Who Satisfies the Party and the People. The speech highlights the importance of education and teachers, which are of great significance to strengthen the construction of teachers’ contingent. With College counselors being an important part of teachers’ contingent, this paper analyzes the significance of college counselors practicing the Good Teacher With Four Haves Standard from this angle, and further puts forward some countermeasures on this basis, namely, a good college counselor should have clear ideal and conviction, have noble moral sentiment, have profound and relevant knowledge, and have a loving and benevolent heart, in order to provide a certain reference for the troop construction of college counselors.This paper clarified the concepts of cognitive load and combined EFL listening decoding as well as the relationship between them, and examined the change of learners’ cognitive load and its impact on their EFL listening decoding which were caused by input of pure audio information and that of combined audio information with mixtures such as pictures and images. Based on this, the author proposed some effective strategies to improve learners’ EFL listening decoding, including strengthening the training of learners’ English thinking, increasing their cognitive level, enriching the design of EFL listening teaching, creating multiple schemas and maintaining the reasonable cognitive load according to individual learners’ cognitive styles.Making a general survey of Jane·Eyre status changing process from its publication to the end of the last century, it is certain that the novel is a dynamic classic after its publication because of its own and outside factors. However, between the late 19 th and the beginning of the 20 th , the society and commentors transferred their focus from Charlotte and his works, causing Jane·Eyre to be stative classic. Since the middle period of the last century the dynamic classic position of Jane·Eyre was again raised.Most of the governments in the world provide the private colleges with necessary financial support. This is evident especially in U.S., Japan and South Korea where the private higher education is very advanced. The private colleges in these countries have undergone different development paths. As their school funds come from different sources, the public financial support they gain exhibits different characteristics. The governments of these three countries attach great important to the development of private colleges, and issued a complete set of regulations to stipulate that the private colleges qualify for the same financial support as the public colleges. Various measures that were taken by the governments to raise funds contribute to sustainable development of the private colleges.В данной работе предлагается методическая организация иероглифического минимума для обучения студентов языкового вуза письму на китайском языке, построенная с учетом принципов гнездовой и концентрической организации материала; выделяются три методически значимых типа иероглифов.There are three aspects to strengthen honest governance education to Chinese policemen which include fully utilizing policemen to construct socialist harmonious society, strengthening ideology and politics education to policemen to develop their autonomy, establishing complete the system to punish and prevent corruption in policemen to further construct system.This study investigated the strategies monolingual Saudi Arabian adults (MSAAs), Saudi EFL adult learners (SEFLALs), and native speakers of English (ENSs) used when complaining. Another related aim was investigating whether SEFLALs displayed pragmatic transfer when using complaint strategies. A total of 183 written responses were collected from MSAAs, SEFLALs, and ENSs via a three-item discourse completion task (DCT) were analyzed. Findings revealed the strategies used by the study participants when performing the speech act of complaints. First, hints, request and annoyance were the most frequently used strategies by MSAAs, SEFLALs, and ENSs. Second, there were no statistically significant differences among MSAAs, SEFLALs, and ENSs in using the strategy of direct accusation which consistent with the concept of positive pragmatic transfer. Third, hints, behavioral blame, request and indirect accusation were cases of weak negative pragmatic transfer as employed the SEFLALs in the current study. Fourth, modified blame was consistent with concept of strong negative pragmatic transfer. Finally, the last two strategies; annoyance and threat were consistent with no transfer, that is, SEFLAL employed these two strategies as ENSs.Lord Jim is an attempt by Joseph Conrad to contemplate on the failure of the dreams of a man whose romantic beliefs in classical heroism and manner of conduct finally brings about his bafflement. In fact, this writer is trying to mirror that one’s lack of knowledge in case of the “how to be of life”, or his inability to vision the modern world practically from an authentic viewpoint holds him from being conscious enough about his real existence, resulting in a tragedy: a death associated with ambiguity, absent-mindedness and fury. To be more specific, the present study intends to investigate Jim’s Romance, his character – as well as that of the other important characters – and the strategies or techniques applied by Conrad, to reflect the failures of such a romantic viewpoint. Key words: Lord Jim; Joseph Conrad; Romance; Heroism; TragedyBased on the development history of Chinese revolution, the recording in the form of painting can help to restore the scene by combining the related historic theme, thus enhance the authenticity of creation of paintings with the theme of contemporary Chinese revolutionary history and objectively help to raise collectors’ collection hobby and interest. This paper discusses the creation and collection of paintings with the theme of contemporary Chinese revolutionary history so as to realize comprehensive understanding of the creation and collection of paintings with the theme of contemporary Chinese revolutionary history and thus promote the development of paintings with the theme of contemporary Chinese revolutionary history.The work of building Party schools for vocational college students is faced with new challenges in the new situation. This paper analyzes the main problems in of the process of building Party schools for vocational college students, and suggests building a mechanism for building Party schools for vocational college students based on the process of cultivating activists.

Economic Analysis of the Multiple Effects of Single Market to Pricing Policy for Meat in Iraq

This study is an attempt to measure the multiple effects of the price system used in some types of meat in Iraq (fish and beef). Effects quantitatively representative of state revenue and the efficiency of production and consumption and its impact on economic performance efficiency as well as the producer and consumer surplus. Projects supported by the state and livestock production. For the purpose of increasing production. After that the demand has increased to a large extent on animal products. As well as the disclosure of the negative effects that occurs from the use of price policy. Mathematics standards use in data analysis and obtaining results. The results include revenues increased state support for low beef and projects for those revenues to support fish projects. There is a loss of production and consumption, efficient use of resources of the two commodities studied in addition to the loss in the efficient use of resources at the level of the economy as a whole. We find that the price of the policy of encouraging the producers of beef, as it was not for the benefit of consumers significantly. As for the fish was not a specific policy to protect the pair to producers or consumers volatile favor producers in some years and in favor of consumers through more than a year. You should reconsider some of the negative aspects of the pricing policy for the advancement of animal production sector.

Estimation of Beef Supply and Demand in Peninsular Malaysia: An Application of Cointegration and Error Correction Model Techniques

This study estimates a complete system of supply-demand equations and analyzes the effects of income and price changes on demand, age of animal, technology, and quantity of imported beef on local beef production. The cointegration and error correction model techniques were applied to the analysis of beef supply and demand in Peninsular Malaysia. Results indicated positive and significant supply response of price for each category of female cattle and buffalo age cohort. However, female cattle over 3 years of age were significant decision variables on the number of cattle (buffalo) to be slaughtered for beef production. On the demand side, expenditure and price of competing meats were the main factors that affected the quantity of beef consumed. The number of breeding cattle/buffalo should be increased through imports to retain a higher number of female calves and to improve the local beef cattle population.

Asymmetric Farm Retail Price Movements in the Malaysian Poultry Market

The relationship between farm, wholesale, and retail prices provides insight into marketing efficiency including the welfare of both consumers and farmers. Investigating the price transmission process at different levels in the marketing channel is crucial in assessing the market efficiency in poultry meat and egg subsectors in Malaysia. Changes in the farm or wholesale price could lead to changes in retail prices asymmetrically and this might distort the poultry and egg markets. This study applied the error correction model of price transmission for the entire poultry meat and egg value chain. The test was carried out using retail and farm monthly price data of poultry meat and eggs from 2000 to 2007. Empirical results suggest that the farm and retail price transmission process for the poultry and egg market is asymmetric. Price transmission estimates with rising farm prices generally are larger than corresponding estimates associated with falling farm prices.