TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) Assessment Institute for Foods, Drugs and Cosmetics (LPPOM) released Sunday a statement asserting that its finding of pork-derived ingredients in the AstraZeneca vaccine still stood.

Earlier, the British-Swedish vaccine producer denied the vaccine it produced contained pork-derived ingredients.

On March 21, the MUI LPPOM revealed their study report on the AstraZeneca vaccine that they claimed was held earlier in February this year by two medicine and vaccine experts in the field of bioprocess engineering and industrial microbiology.

The MUI claimed that the audit looked into the AstraZeneca vaccine dossier from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the Indonesian Food and Drugs Monitoring Agency (BPOM). “This data were sent by the WHO as the vaccine procurement went through a multilateral route,” said LPPOM executive director Muti Arintawati in a written statement.

Muti said the pork-derived contents were found in two aspects: on the stage of preparing the virus host that they said used pork-derived components in the form of pork pancreatic trypsin, which was used to separate the host species from the microcarrier.

LPPOM also said it was found in the virus seed research up to research in the master seed and working seed phases.

Read: VP Ma'ruf Amin Weighs in on Haram Label of AstraZeneca Vaccine

EGI ADYATAMA