Dubai Municipality technical team discusses unifying monitoring procedures for imported foodstuff in GCC

The meeting, held at Al Bustan Rotana Hotel during 21 and 22 December, discussed unification of monitoring procedures for imported foodstuff in the GCC countries.

Khalid Sharif Al Awadhi, Director of Food Control Department in Dubai Municipality said this meeting comes as a culmination of the 11th meeting of the GCC Food Safety Committee, which was held at the GCC General Secretariat in Riyadh in November 2008. Riyadh meeting had discussed a number of issues, the most important being the manual for monitoring procedures for imported foodstuff, the mechanism and requirements for implementing it, forming a unified technical action team for studying the remarks of the GCC member states on the manual and formulating a time plan for implementation and follow up.

A working session was also held alongside the meeting to explain the mechanism of the monitoring procedures for imported foodstuff through the ports of GCC countries. The session was attended by top officials of the concerned bodies that monitor the import of foodstuff at the ports so they become trainers of inspectors and inspection technicians and reduce the transactions in foodstuff import.

Al Awadhi said the meeting discussed the necessary steps to unify the monitoring procedures for foodstuff and unifying the documents related to foodstuff that are imported through the ports of GCC countries. He said the GCC Food Safety Committee has approved the manual and has formulated a mechanism for its implementation.

The members of the Technical Team also paid a visit to one of the ports of Dubai to know the imported foodstuff monitoring system there. They were explained in detail about the foodstuff inspection mechanism implemented in Dubai as per the best international practices.