Russia In Fact Imposes Food Embargo On Belarus

The Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance has banned not just cheese and meat, but also flour and cereals.

The Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance has published the list of products from Belarus, bearing the risk of spreading the African swine fever virus (ASF), the import of which should be conducted under additional requirements, RIA "Novosti" reports. The Service has banned not just cheese and meat, but also flour and cereals.

On Monday, the Service’s Press-Secretary Julia Melano informed that the Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance imposed additional requirements as for the import of the products bearing the risk of spreading the African swine fever, from Belarus. Thus, the imported products should be accompanied with the import permit, which will be issued with regard to the Belarusian products, bearing the risk of spreading the ASF.

The list of the controlled goods that are imported into Russia from Belarus, with regard to which the additional measure in the form of the import permit will be applied, includes live swine, fresh, chilled or frozen pork, edible offal of swine and pork fat.

In addition, the list includes sausages and similar products of meat, meat offal or blood, food flour, both low-grounds and coarse flour of meat or meat offal, hard and soft wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, soybeans, low-grounds and coarse flour of seeds or oleaginous fruits, other than seeds of mustard, which is used for animal feed, macaroni with fillings containing sausage, meat, meat offal or blood.

The products from Belarus will be screened from the border to the place of realization.

Also, the list includes processed cheese and other food preparations containing sausage, meat, meat offal, blood or any combination of these products, equipment and supplies for transportation, breeding, temporary keeping of animals of all types and equipment for the transportation of products of animal origin that were in use as well as hunting trophies and stuffed animals, including those which had passed through the taxidermy treatment, or canned.

On February 3, Lukashenka offered to start a criminal case against Head of the Russian Federal Service for veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance Sergey Dankvert allegedly for setting obstacles to the supplies of the Belarusian products to the Russian Federation. The Kremlin’s press-center expressed their bewilderment caused by such an offer back then, while the representatives of the Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance stated that all the restrictions with regard to the supplies of the Belarusian products were carried out in accordance with the rules of the international trade.