The Consummah Standard
What we score, how we score it, and what we will never do — stated plainly, so anyone can hold us to it.
What Consummah is
Consummah is a product confidence scoring platform. We research health and supplement products — their ingredients, their sourcing, their certification status, and how transparently brands communicate about all of the above — and we publish the evidence and a score for each one, so that the person buying a protein powder or a collagen supplement can see not just what a brand claims, but what the evidence actually supports.
In V1, the platform is supplement-focused and Muslim-consumer-led. Halal confidence is the primary lens because it is where the consumer need is most acute and most underserved, and because the evidence framework required to answer the halal question — independently verifiable sourcing, disclosed ingredients, transparent manufacturing, accountable brands — is the same framework any serious ethical consumer would want applied to any product.
The intention from the start has been to build toward something broader: a platform for the ethical consumer who wants to know what is actually in a product and whether the claims around it hold up — regardless of the specific values framework driving that question. That work is underway. This page documents the standards that govern what we have built so far, and that will govern everything built after it.
The two questions at the centre of this platform
Two Arabic terms shape the scoring methodology. Most existing halal-checking tools collapse them into a single signal. Consummah keeps them separate — because they are genuinely different questions, and conflating them does consumers a disservice.
Halal — حلال — Permissible
A product is halal if it contains no ingredient or process forbidden under Islamic law. Certification bodies — HMC, HFA, and others — exist specifically to assess this, and their work is treated by Consummah as the strongest available evidence. A verified, independently checkable certification from a recognised body earns the highest certification score on this platform.
Tayyib — طيب — Wholesome
A product can be entirely halal and still fall short on wholesomeness — poor sourcing transparency, low-quality ingredients that happen to be permissible, or manufacturing practices that a conscientious consumer would want to know about. Tayyib is the broader standard, and it is where halal confidence and ethical consumer concerns genuinely overlap.
The Confidence Score reflects certification quality and evidence strength across both dimensions. Where a product's tayyib status is relevant and the evidence supports a comment on it, we make that explicit on the product page rather than burying it in the score. A high Confidence Score means the evidence picture is clear and strong — it does not mean the product is nutritionally optimal or ethically superior to alternatives on dimensions we have not scored.
Five categories of evidence — every weight explained
The Consummah Confidence Score is a number from 0 to 100, built as the weighted sum of five independent categories of evidence. The number does comparative work — it lets two products be assessed against each other at a glance. The label attached to each band describes what the evidence shows, not a verdict we are rendering on the consumer's behalf.
Certification & Verification
Whether a recognised certifying body has independently reviewed this product and whether that certification can be confirmed against the certifier's own records. A certification claimed on a brand's website with no named body and no independent database entry does not score as a found certification — it scores as a claim that cannot be verified, which is a meaningfully different finding.
Halal Ingredient Confidence
Whether the specific ingredients in this product carry known halal risk, and whether that risk has been resolved by disclosure, certification, or sourcing evidence. Gelatine sources, enzyme origins, omega-3 derivation, alcohol-based carriers — these are the questions that make a Muslim consumer spend thirty minutes researching a product before purchasing, and this category scores how clearly those questions are answered.
Ingredient Transparency
Whether all ingredients are named specifically enough that their status can be assessed. A product listing "flavouring" without specifying source cannot score well here — the consumer and the researcher are in the same position, unable to verify what they cannot identify. This category applies equally to any consumer who reads labels carefully, regardless of the specific values driving that habit.
Manufacturing Clarity
Whether the production process is disclosed in enough detail to assess cross-contamination risk, shared production lines, and facility-level controls. A product can have clean ingredients and still be produced in a facility whose practices an informed consumer would want to know about.
Community & Brand Response
Whether the brand engages substantively with consumer questions about sourcing and certification, whether they have responded to Consummah's own outreach, and whether the community has surfaced concerns about this product that are not reflected in the official evidence picture. A brand that engages openly scores higher than one that does not respond.
Five things a certification status can be
Most platforms treat certification as binary. Real-world evidence is more complex, and treating it as binary produces scores that mislead. Consummah uses five certification states, each reflecting a distinct evidential position. Two are frequently confused and the distinction matters: Claim Unverifiable means nobody disputes the claim — there is simply nothing independent to verify it against. Claim Disputed means an independent source actively contradicts it. A claim that is merely unconfirmed is a different finding from one shown to be false, and the score reflects that difference.
Found
A named certifying body has reviewed this specific product and the certification is independently checkable — confirmed against the certifier's own records or directly linkable certificate. The strongest evidential position.
Not Found
No certification has been claimed or found. The score reflects ingredient-level research without certification mitigation — the honest absence of a claim, not penalised as if a false one had been made.
Variant Dependent
Certification genuinely applies to some SKUs or flavour variants in a product line but is unconfirmed for the specific one being viewed. The score is marked Provisional until the variant's status is independently confirmed.
Claim Unverifiable
A halal certification is asserted but no certifying body is named and nothing is independently checkable. Nobody disputes this claim — there is simply nothing to verify it against. A claim is not the same as evidence, and the score reflects the difference.
Claim Disputed
A certification is claimed but has been actively contradicted by an independent source. A more serious finding than Claim Unverifiable — a claim shown to be false scores below an honest absence of certification, not above it.
Five things we will never do
These are operational constraints, not aspirations. The platform's architecture and scoring methodology are specifically designed to enforce them. Every six months we review this list and confirm each commitment is still being kept.
On Certification Claims
We will never mark a product as certified when the certification cannot be independently confirmed. If a brand claims halal certification but no certifying body's records contain that product, the score reflects that gap — not the claim.
On Commercial Independence
We will never score a product above what the evidence supports because of a commercial relationship with the brand. Brands may submit products for review. The score that results is determined solely by the evidence found — not by the relationship, not by payment, not by pressure.
On Halal and Tayyib
We will never present a halal verdict as a tayyib verdict. A certified product receives credit for certification. It does not receive a claim about wholesomeness, sourcing ethics, or nutritional quality that the certification process does not assess. These are genuinely different questions and we will keep them separate.
On Keeping Scores Current
We will never leave a stale score uncorrected. Certifications lapse. Brands reformulate. Sourcing changes. When we become aware that a score no longer reflects current evidence, we update it and record what changed and when.
On Acknowledging Limitations
We will never pretend the methodology is complete or that V1 covers everything it eventually should. The published methodology documents its own limitations explicitly. Where scholarly opinion on an ingredient is genuinely divided, or where a certification state has been defined but not yet encountered in practice, we say so on the product page rather than resolving uncertainty in the direction that makes the score look cleaner.
The database is a research effort
We cannot be in every supply chain, ahead of every reformulation, or aware of every community-level finding about a brand. The people buying these products often know things we do not — about brand responses to direct questions, about changes to formulations, about certification claims that do not match the certifier's own records.
Every product page has a mechanism to flag concerns or submit an ingredient question. Corrections substantiated by evidence change scores, and the change is documented publicly. The score is not a poll — but community knowledge is evidence, and evidence changes scores when it should.
Scholarly advisory — where we are
The scoring methodology has been designed with scholarly review in mind. The five certification states, the halal/tayyib distinction, and the evidentiary standards underlying each category are grounded in established Islamic legal principles and written to be evaluable by qualified scholars.
We are forming a Shariah Advisory panel — named scholars who will review the methodology, confirm its alignment with mainstream Sunni fiqh, and whose names will appear on this platform when that review is complete.
We are not claiming endorsement we do not yet have. We will name it when it exists. Until then, the full methodology is available for any scholar, researcher, or consumer who wishes to evaluate it independently.
Three things this platform is not
Defining what something does not claim to be is as important as defining what it does.
A Halal Certification Body
Consummah does not certify products. A high Confidence Score is evidence of certification quality and sourcing transparency — it is not the certification itself. Brands seeking halal certification should contact a recognised body such as HMC or HFA. We work alongside those bodies; we are not a substitute for them.
A Fatwa Service
For matters of religious ruling where scholarly opinion is genuinely divided, consult a qualified scholar following your madhab. Consummah will show you where the uncertainty in the evidence is. It will not resolve the religious question for you, and it does not claim to.
A Medical or Nutritional Advice Platform
Scores reflect halal confidence and sourcing transparency — not efficacy, safety, or clinical value. Nothing on this platform constitutes nutritional, medical, or therapeutic advice. For health decisions, consult a qualified healthcare professional.
A product earns a high Consummah score by doing three things: obtaining certification from a recognised body and making it independently verifiable; disclosing its ingredients and their sources specifically enough that the status of each can be assessed; and engaging transparently with consumer and researcher questions about its production.
No product earns a high score by paying for one, by claiming a certification it cannot demonstrate, or by relying on a checkmark that substitutes assertion for evidence.
That is the Consummah Standard.