Quality crisis in Russia’s sausage market

Numerous experts have suggested that the amount of meat in Russian sausages is decreasing, so products are becoming less natural, while some even pose a direct threat to consumer health.

“It is possible to compensate the rising prices of natural ingredients, only by substituting them with cheaper alternatives. As a result, we often find sierra rice [fermented rice] is used in sausages. This meansthere is less meat being used,”​ said Vsevolod Vishnevitsky, head of Public Control.

Fighting for profitability​

Tatiana Krikun, head of the food committee of the Consumer Markets Participants Union, agrees. “Food manufacturers clearly start using cheaper and lesser-quality ingredients, while the embargo on imports from the EU has resulted in food additives being purchased in India and China. As the result almost all [sausage] products that arrive on the grocery shelves are not meeting the all-Union State Standard,”​ she said.

According to Krikun, if manufacturers were to produce sausages to the proper levels provided by the country’s standards and sanitary regulations, the prices of such products on the market would be too high for most consumers, given the fall in purchasing power in the last two years. As a result, she said, it was now almost impossible to produce quality sausages in Russia and stay profitable.

This opinion was also voiced by Alexander Ishevsky, Dean of the Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology at the Institute of Refrigeration, ITMO University in St Petersburg. “If sausage producers were to strictly follow the state standards, the retail price would be so high that they would only be able to sell 5% of their total production,”​ he stated.

Deteriorating quality​

According to a study by Romir, the Russian centre for public opinion and market research, since the food embargo, 55-57% of all Russian citizens living in the major cities have noticed a deterioration in the quality of most food products. And market experts suggest that the quality of most products will continue to decrease further in 2016.

“If all the producers were to manufacture only quality products with higher prices, than we would face a significant drop in sausage consumption, but companies would keep their levels of profitability. Given the current trends, manufacturers have no choice but to compete with each other in terms of reducing production costs,”​ commented Russian agricultural analyst Eugene Gerden.

The quality of Russian sausages was poor even before the crisis. In 2012, Russian scientists called for a decrease in the percentage of fat in sausage products, as numerous studies revealed that the protein/fat ratio in sausages was 1:4, compared with 1:1 in imported products.

As a result it was suggested that consumption of such sausages was extremely bad for the health, particularly the cardiovascular system. This was cited as one of the main factors why Russia is one of the world’s leading countries for heart disease.