On July 24, Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia’s Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Supervision, lifted the restrictions on imports of Belarusian apples against the guarantees of Belarus’ Main State Inspection of Crop Farming, Quarantine and Protection of Plants.
The decision taken is the result of the Russian agency reps’ recent visit to to our country. They arrived to size up the potential of local fruit growers and familiarize themselves with the control over the certification process.
Rosselkhoznadzor experts inspected 51 apple companies, received information about the areas of fruit-bearing apple yards, sorts of apples, yielda, production plans 2019 as well as the availability of fruit storagea and apples’ shelf life.
At the same time, the Russian agency is set to ask the Minister of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) Viktor Nazarenko to amend EEC legislation ECE so that Russia could be able to track the movement of quarantineable products between the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union.
In April, Rosselkhoznadzor imposed temporary restrictions on the imports of apples and pears from Belarus claiming that it makes deliveries of sanctioned food of EU origin to Russia. Rosselkhoznadzor stressed the agency did not receive reliable information about the volume of imports and the volume of goods that passed through the procedure of customs clearance in our country. This leads to falsification of the goods’ true country of origin, the Russian side added.
In late June, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a decree extending ‘specific economic measures against countries that imposed sanctions against Russia until December 31, 2020.
Since August 2015, Russia has destroyed about thousands of tons of food from countries that were put under the Russian food embargo. Most of these products made it into Russia through Belarus.
Belarusian companies gained notoriety for purchasing food products ‘made in the EU’, ‘editing’ some inscription on their packages and then delivering them to Russia which took retaliation measures against the bloc for its sanctions list and support of Ukraine.
