Foods contaminated with elevated levels of radiation have not come to the Ukrainian market from Japan, according to Vitaliy Bashynsky, Deputy head of the State Veterinary and Biosecurity Service of Ukraine.
"After March 11, 2011 not one tonne or kilogram of food that has been checked by the State Veterinary and Biosecurity Service has come to Ukraine [from Japan]. This is linked to the fact that now Japan is in turmoil and the country is not … carrying out intensive exports to other countries, especially to Ukraine, which is located very far [from Japan]," he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday.
Bashynsky said that it was not a good way out of the situation to ban a country that has suffered from a natural disaster from exporting its foods and goods.
"We’re able to check the foodstuffs arriving from Japan, and not all of Japan has the status of the territory contaminated with radiation. There is no need to ban imports from all over Japan," he said.
He said that from March 28, 2011 the State Veterinary and Biosecurity Service of Ukraine is to carry out more thorough checks on all products arriving from Japan to Ukraine.
"We haven’t registered elevated [levels of radiation] after March 11. Before March 11 there were some cases, but these were mainly our Ukrainian foodstuffs, or food from Belarus and those parts of Russia that suffered from the Chornobyl disaster," he said.
He said that these were not large batches of food. High radiation levels were registered in food sold by private businessmen. Elevated radiation levels were mainly seen in mushrooms, he said.
