The Supreme Council of Health (SCH) conducted health inspection of around 91,949 imported cargoes of food products that entered the country last year.
These included around 1,548,377,789kg of food products and about 2,50,443kg of them were rejected, constituting about 0.13% of the total import. Besides, 272,958,000kg of such imported cargoes were destroyed and 777,485kg were sent back. The approval and rejection of imported food items were based on the degree of compliance with the legal, technical and health standards as stipulated in Law No. 8 for 1990, concerning the regulation of human food control, and the related technical GCC standards.
SCH health inspectors took 6,909 different samples for lab tests from these cargoes, 6,392 of these were proven good and 512 were non-compliant for various reasons, which constitutes about 7.5% of the total samples tested during 2014.
Abu Samra border post received the largest amount of imported food cargoes last year amounting to 784,419,011kg, followed by Doha Seaport 702,953,338kg, and the airport with 56,005,440kg.
Abu Samra receives the food products coming from GCC and neighbouring countries by land, while Doha port receives food cargoes from Europe and other countries via sea. Sensitive food items and food imported for major restaurants and hotels usually come by air.
