GCC Standardization Organization

The GCC Standardization Organization is a standards body established under the authority of the Gulf Cooperation Council, serving the Council's member states, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Yemen. It is headquartered in Riyadh with a branch office in Jeddah, and it develops and adopts standardization initiatives across areas including water quality, fire protection, halal foods, tobacco products and food safety, reviewing and adopting existing global standards where no standard of its own already exists. By 2010 it had established about 2,700 standards, and it has also established GULFMET, a regional metrology organization, through its Technical Council.