The terms of conducting the inspection of Ukrainian pork by specialists from the Directorate General for Health & Consumers of the European Commission (DG SANKO) have not yet been approved.
“Negotiations on the issue are underway. In the near term we will really approve the date of the conducting the mission and expect that we will be notified about the date in autumn,” Deputy Head of the State Veterinary and Biosecurity Service of Ukraine Vitaliy Bashynsky said at a briefing on Oct. 17, adding that the notification in autumn does not mean that the mission will arrive in autumn.
“As for the mission’s arrival, today we have three problem districts in Ukraine regarding African swine fever. You know that Ukraine is passing the regionalization procedure, and until we have outbreaks of ASF we could forget about exports of pork to the European Union,” he said, adding that the situation with ASF is mainly provoked by the uncontrolled movement of pork products from Russia.
He said that Ukraine will be able to be a candidate for accepting the inspectors’ mission only when all the ASF quarantines, which are imposed for 40 days from the moment of the disease outbreak, are lifted, and the report on this is approved by the International Epizootic Bureau.
“I don’t rule out that the mission will arrive early next year. The DG SANKO will define the date,” he said.
Bashynsky also said that European specialists assess the food quality control system visiting several enterprises and there could be four or five enterprises which the mission could visit.
He also said that negotiations on the resumption of the DG SANKO mission on beef are being held.
“We’ve got the first positive response that this is possible,” he said.
