MOSCOW - Russia's consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has not allowed Ukraine's Lozova Dairy Plant to export its cheese to the Russian market, accusing Kyiv of disrupting recent agreements on the "cheese problem".
Rospotrebnadzor said in a press release, received by Interfax on
July 24, that it had studied the Ukrainian plant’s documents detailing
its measures to correct shortcomings detected during an assessment of
the enterprise’s compliance with Russian milk and dairy products quality
requirements.
“Our analysis of these documents exposed a superficial approach to
their preparation, as well as production control at the enterprise and
control over the identification of cheese and cheese products
manufactured by it, which did not allow us to agree to permit this
enterprise to enter the Russian market,” it said.
“So far Rospotrebnadzor has not received any complete information
from Ukraine’s Economic Development and Trade Ministry detailing the
operations of Ukrainian laboratories testing cheese that could be
delivered to the Russian market,” the watchdog said.
“Apart from that, the Ukrainian side represented by Ukraine’s State
Inspectorate for Consumer Rights Protection has failed to honor
agreements to draft and sign a memorandum of cooperation with the
Federal Consumer Rights and Human Wellbeing Service,” Rospotrebnadzor
said.
The Russian service’s laboratory received 236 samples of cheese
produced by the Mensky Syr branch of the Prometei enterprise, the
Hadiachsyr company, the Pyriatyn Cheese Factory and Dubnomoloko, it
said. A total of 217 samples were tested. Certificates of compliance
with Russian food safety requirements were issued for 214 of them.
