At the press conference held jointly by the MOCCAE and DM at Gulfood 2018 in the presence of His Excellency Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment, Engineer Khalid Al Sharif, Assistant Director General for Health, Safety and Environment Control at Dubai Municipality, said: “To accommodate the needs of the rising number of food producers, importers and exporters in the country, Dubai Municipality helped develop Zad Federal System, which complies with the highest standards in food safety. Developing Zad was a necessity as the food sector is booming in Dubai particularly, and in the UAE in general.”

Mr. Al Sharif added that the system saves customers’ time and effort and reduces the cost of tracking the requirements of food shipments, as it provides a rich database for imported and locally- manufactured foodstuff. “Zad platform offers five key services to approve and register food products,” he continued.

Majd Al Herbawi, Director of Food Safety Department at MOCCAE, said, “Through Zad Federal System, the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment aims to offer more user-friendly services to its customers. The smart integrated platform comes in line with the ministry’s commitment to developing and implementing transparent monitoring procedures and maintaining a safe food supply.”

She noted that the new platform conforms with the UAE Vision 2021, which emphasizes the importance of continuous cooperation between the federal and local government entities to push forward the wheel of development in the UAE.

The smart application provides five key services: The first is food products classification and registration service, which allows users to search among 600,000 registered products by entering barcode numbers or through the advanced search by typing product details like country of origin, trademark, size or packaging. The second is transferring shipments between UAE emirates service, which allows importers to submit a cargo transferring request from the destination emirate to the emirate they are licensed in, to avoid tracking hassle and paying extra expenses to port authorities. This service reduces the required time for transferring shipments from two weeks to one day maximum. The third is lab analysis results exchange service, facilitating data exchange between different emirates to reduce human resources required and cut the government’s extra expenses, in addition to saving traders time and effort by avoiding product retesting. The fourth is the banned food products enquiry service, which allows users to enquire about foodstuff which are banned from entering the country to protect the society from foodborne diseases. The fifth is the Halal products import facilitation and monitoring service, which provides a list of Islamic associations and slaughterhouses certified by the Authority for Standardization and Metrology and the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment.