Jordan: Registration criteria for medicinal herbs eased

The Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA) has modified registration criteria for medicinal herbs to enable manufacturers to export their products to regional and international markets. JFDA Director General Mohammad Rawabdeh on Saturday said the new regulations will allow manufacturers to obtain certificates of origin for their products, which will help them promote and export medicinal herbs. Previously, manufacturers and suppliers of medicinal herbs were only allowed to promote their products in Jordan. Rawabdeh told The Jordan Times that the JFDA has also decided to ease the registration criteria of vitamin D3 to facilitate the registration process for manufacturers and importers. Unlike other countries, in Jordan vitamin D3 is registered as a medicine and not a supplement, the JFDA director said, noting that registration requirements for medicines are “much more complicated” than those needed for registering a supplement. “We will keep considering vitamin D3 as a medicine, but with fewer requirements to allow local manufacturers to produce it, but this does not mean that we will be lenient when it comes to safety requirements,” Rawabdeh said. He indicated that the JFDA board of directors has approved the establishment of a “risk management unit”, which will be responsible for the safety of food products that are imported into the Kingdom. He remarked that the JFDA will adopt a new system to rank merchants and importers according to their performance and history. “We will have a golden list for those importers and merchants who have never imported food products with quality and safety problems,” Rawabdeh said, adding that not all products imported to the local market by businesses on the golden list will be tested when entering the country. However, the JFDA will maintain its right to test random samples of the imports whenever it finds it necessary.