October 4 2007, 10:20

Russia completely banned vegetable, fruit and meat imports from Poland

Russian Agricultural Inspection is intended to finally ban the imports of Polish meat-and-diary and plant products to Russia starting from the 1st of November. The ban will be in effect even for the processed and supplied via the third countries porducts, Sergey Dankvert, the Cheif of the Inspection, said yesterday. The experts fear the prices are likely to signficantly increase in Russia after such steps.

According to Mr. Dankvert, Russia will import ready meat and diary products from Poland only from the re-certified enterprises. He added, the most recent re-certification was conducted two years ago. Our country has the right to certify several enterprises per year, but Russia was not provided with this opportunity niether this year nor past year. Also, he reminded, European Commission had recently released the report about more than 100 Polish enterprises checked, as a result a great number of them was deprived from the right to supply products to Europe.

Talking about fruits and vegetables, Sergey Dankvert proves, during 8 months of this year 47 shipments (840 tons) of Polish products with the increased content of dangerous substances have been defined by means of spot control. These products were mainly cabbage, apple, and tomatoes. The remaining quantity of pesticides, nitrates, nitrites and other dangerous substances significanlty icnreased the upper limit.

We'd like to remind that Russia emposed temporary ban on the supplies of meat and vegetable products from Poland in 2005. After that only processed meat and diary products were imported; plant products were imported only through the third countries if they guarantee the product safety. The EU officials admitted that Warsaw had not fully met European requirements to meat export to a certain extent. However, to their opinion, there was no basis for embargo, so that Russian measures were considered as "unproportinonal". Naturally, the trade turnover of agricultural products between two countires has been dramatically decreased. The share of Polish agricultural products reduced 40% to 17% in the exports to Russia.

Dmitriy Yanin, thr Chairman of the Board of International Confederation of Consumer Communities, says that Poland probably has non-consciensious suppliers. "But they exist elsewhere, in each country, including Russia" he observed. In average, the quality of our products is hardly better. Talking about Polish system of state inspection, it meets European standards quite fully. Poland is the country with the developed agriculture, its inexpensive, but rather quality products are supplied to Germany and many other countries. To my mind, Russian Agricutlrual Inspection should consider each enterprise separately; some meagures should be taken if there are any facts. The ban on the country level will hardly lead to anything useful".

In its turn, Sergey Yushin, the Manager of the Executive Committee, National Meat Association, observed that the claims regarding meat quality are not aimed to the producers. "There are questions to the control system. First of all, why are the products of different regions of the world are supplied as Polish products? There are more than enough cases of the contrafact off-quality product supplies in Russian-Polish trade. Nevertheless, I don't think the ban is able to considerably affect Russian market: Polish meat occupied and will occupy in near future just a small share of the market", the expert points out.

Dmitriy Yanin has a differnet point of view. He is sure: such actions of inspection authorities are harmful, primarily because of the fact that they increase prices on the inner market. "This year we witness the highest price growth for food products in the recent five years; it also conserns meat and milk. Such talks stimulate the prices to further increase. The solution is either to recall producers' licenses or to leave them in peace", he said in his interview.

The introduced full ban on the supplies of Polish products to Russia will seriously injure fruit&vegetable industry of Poland, Maxim Yenchenko, the Coordinator of "Agrooglyad: Vegetables and Fruits" thinks. The ban on the direct supplies is still in effect; despite of this fact, Polish producers supplied fruits and vegetables worth to the total sum of $ 75 mln. to Russia in 2006. Also, the introduced ban has a concealed danger for Ukraine and Belarus: the streams of Polish products, which were legally supplied to Russia via Baltic countries earlier, will now seek for the other, illegal paths to Russian market. It is possible that the territory of these two countries will be the place to change "the origin" of Polish products. If Russians have any concerns about the origin of vegetables and fruits supplied from the territory of Ukraine and Belarus, these countries may face the threat of the banned supplies to Russian market. This has been already the case with meat-and-diary products.

The discussion of the influence of the banned supplies of Polish vegetables and fruits to Russian market with Russian largest importers of fruits&vegetables is planned in the framework of the second international conference "Fruits&Vegetable Business of Russia 2007. Wealth of New Opportunities" to be held in Moscow on the 23rd-25th of October 2007.