Shaklee: Halal or Haram?

p/s: this entry is created in order to clarify the halal status of Shaklee. It is not ,in any way, to offend any Shaklee's distributor or consumers. Comments and information are welcomed. Hope we can get some benefits from this.

I have been eying on Shaklee's products for several months
ever since my colleague, Farha, told me the benefits of using this product, which is to increase the breast milk (BM) production.
I have friends who had to stop BF as early as the baby reached 3 months, due to lack of BM
Of course, I would like to avoid this situation, as i aim to BF for 2 years.
Thus, Shaklee really catches my interest.
For breastfeeding mom, it is suggested to take: Alfalfa complex, B-complex, Vita-C and Vita-Lea (source)

As Shaklee is an oversea product, the best thing to do is to check if it is Halal or not.
So I sent an email to Shaklee (i think the HQ in US) and asked if all the Shaklee's products are suitable for vegetarian.
Had been in France for 8 years, I have this habit to ask/check if the food that I am going to buy is suitable for vegetarian. I find it the nicest and the easiest way to know if I can eat it or not without offending the other party. I also would like to avoid the judging look when I pronounce the word "Halal" and to avoid explaining why i can only eat halal food. Believe me, they dont take"because I am a Muslim" as an answer.

Enfin bref, Shaklee did reply, by providing me a list of Shaklee's products which are suitable for vegetarian.
To my big surprise (actually I expected all the products are derived only from plants..huhu) only 25 are listed. (cf pics below)





Luckily, 3 of the products for BF set are in the list, while Vita-Lea is not. Thus I googled on the internet, and Wow! there have been a lot of discussion about this. I got some info, mainly from Shaklee's independent distributor's website, but to my regret, all of them just copied and pasted the same story. Luckily, there is an halal certificate from Islamic Services of America, certifying SOME Shaklee's products (not all of them ye)

At the same time, I also emailed one of the distributor, Kak Azlin, in order to get more clarification on this matter. By the way, one point that caught my attention when reading the story is , Shaklee's distributors assure that Shaklee do separate manufacturing for Islamic countries (that is what I understand from the underlined sentence on the website, as if Shaklee's is concerned about the Halal issue in Muslim world. If this is true, I will really respect Shaklee as not so many non-muslim company really do that.

A reply from Kak Azlin confirmed that Shaklee uses Halal bovine gelatine in the products that are distributed in Islamic countries, and the slaughter halal certificate (can i say that?huhu) is always been renewed from time to time. According to her, this confirmation was obtained from her upline, who visited the factory. She promised me to email the certificate to prove the story.

I am still waiting for her email, because, for me, it sounds a bit weird that Shaklee distributes halal products only for Islamic countries, as the US, France and the UK for example, have a large Muslim population as well. Well, let's wait for the certificate.

On the other hand, as I said, I found the Halal certificate from I.S.A from her website. So I contacted I.S.A in order to confirm the authenticity of the certificate. They did reply, and confirmed that it is authentic. They also confirmed that I.S.A certifies Halal for SOME of Shaklee's products, which are listed on the certificate, but according to them, there are many of Shaklee's products that have not been submitted to I.S.A for halal certification.
Here is a copy of the certificate issued by I.S.A:



If you guys compare the vegetarian list and the halal list, there are some which are halal but not listed for vegetarian. In my humble and not expert opinion, it is may due to the fact that vegetarian does not eat meat AT ALL, including fish. So if the product contains oil fish for example, it is not suitable for vegetarian, but it is considered halal for us. Other than this reason, I dunt have any idea. Wallahualam.

As for me, I am glad to see that Veta-Lea is listed as halal, thus I can use it without any doubt. My conclusion from my finding is, not all Shaklee's products are Halal, if you really care with what you eat, than it is better to consume those which are certified Halal. For other products, I will consider it as non-halal and will wait for confirmation to prove the "separate manufacturing" story. By the way, Jakim recognises I.S.A =)

new update:
just noticed that not all Shaklee products are distributed to Malaysia..and the Shaklee products that we have in Malaysia (refers to Shaklee's Malaysia website) are all listed in halal certificate. Alhamdulillah =)