Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) inspectors made 1,713 observations during their visits to 113 pharmaceutical factories in 2023. The visits aimed to ensure that the factories met satisfactory manufacturing criteria before selling products in local markets, ensuring medicine's safety in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Foreign factories comprised 74% of the visits, with 84 factories, while 29 local factories were also inspected. Of these, 102 were human pharmaceutical factories, and 11 were veterinary medicine factories. Inspectors suspended ten of the visited factories.
CEO of the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) Dr. Hisham bin Saad Aljadhey headed the SFDA's delegation participating in the 5th Annual Meeting of International Heads of Food Agencies Forum (IHFAF), hosted in Singapore from April 16 to 20, 2024, under the theme "Food Safety for a Resilient and Sustainable World". The meeting witnessed the participation of 18 countries and 22 organizations, including WHO, FAO, and the Codex Alimentarius Commission.
The CEO of the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA) Dr. Hisham Al-Jadhey, on an official visit to Germany, accompanied by a delegation, has held a meeting with several German and Polish public institutions that support the private sector and food companies.
He provided an overview of the regulations and initiatives the authority had launched to support and facilitate investment, and a briefing about its requirements for listing and registration.
The CEO of the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA), Dr. Hisham bin Saad Aljadhey, has recently met with a delegation from the Veterinary Inspectorate of the Polish Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The meeting was attended by the Commercial Attaché at the Kingdom's Embassy in Germany, Sulaiman Al-Humaidan, the Executive Vice President of the Operations Sector, Sami Al-Saqr, and the Executive Vice President of the Food Sector, Dr. Mohammed Al-Nasser.
The CEO of the Saudi Food and Drug Authority (SFDA), Dr. Hisham bin Saad Aljadhey, met today with the director of the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Andreas Hensel.
During the meeting, the two officials discussed a joint action plan between the SFDA and the German institute and the activities and tasks of each agency.
The SFDA delegation also met with the director of the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL), Friedel Cramer.
The eleventh meeting of the Codex Coordinating Committee for the Near East (CCNE11), held at FAO headquarters on 18-22 September 2023, in Rome and chaired by Saudi Arabia, represented by the SFDA, has issued a number of recommendations, most notably Saudi Arabia's assuming the presidency of two electronic working groups and stressing the importance of sharing the SFDA’s experience in Healthy Food Strategy (HFS) with the member states.