GCC guide for food control from April

The Ministry of Public Health announced yesterday that the GCC Guide for Control on Imported Food will be implemented from April and made mandatory from October this year. The guide aims at achieving the highest standards of food safety and facilitating the movement of international food trade, according to the best international practices in this area, the ministry explained in a statement. This would also maintain the common interests of the food exporting countries and the GCC countries. Wassan Abdullah al-Bakir, the ministry’s Director of Food Safety and Environmental Health, pointed out that the guide includes the most important technical principles for imported food control before releasing them to the local market. It has been decided that these will be implemented simultaneously across all GCC countries.