Officials in the countries said that exports will be restricted until authorities are satisfied that appropriate guarantees can be made over the supply of these products.
The investigation follows claims made by Russian veterinary agencies in early August that some EU producers were supplying the Russian market with finished meat products made of raw intestinal membranes and meat from China.
A representative of the Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor) told Globalmeatnews.com: “It has come out that there is wide practice in the EU of using raw materials from third countries for the production of finished meat products. In addition to China, some EU countries are buying in products from India and Pakistan.”
Threat to Russia
Experts pointed out that this practice was not only posing a threat to Russian consumers, but also to meat producers in the country.
“China is shipping meat and meat products to EU countries at very low prices, and re-exporting them to Russia is not only threatening biological security, but is also increasing competition on the Russian market, due to the low cost [of these products]. As a result, Russian producers are suffering losses,” said an expert from the Russian analytical agency Agrorucom in an interview with Globalmeatnews.com.
Rosselkhoznadzor said that not all countries that have imported the forbidden products to Russia have made the decision to restrict exports.
“We have had a lot of claims in respect of products from Italy and Poland. The Netherlands and Denmark, as well as some other Western European countries, rarely allow such violations. But Poland did not impose restrictions on exports, although it would be logical,” said the Rosselkhoznadzor representative.
However, the agency confirmed that the Russian authorities were not considering imposing blanket restrictions on imports of meat from the EU.
“We hope that the situation will resolve itself in the near future, as we currently see that the veterinary services of the EU have taken necessary steps to do that. We do not want to impose restrictions on imports of animal products from the EU,” said the representative.