You're reading: Official: Inspection of Ukrainian cheese-makers postponed

MOSCOW (Interfax) - On March 19 experts from Russia's Consumer Rights Protection Service (Rospotrebnadzor) will not travel to Ukraine to inspect facilities that intend to export cheese to Russia, Rospotrebnadzor head and Chief Sanitation Doctor Gennady Onishchenko announced.

He said his service was ready to start inspecting Ukrainian cheese-makers on March 19 but the parameters of the inspection had not been agreed upon.

"While we confirm our readiness to leave on March 19 we won’t do that. We have no definite confirmation of the technical parameters of the stay, the composition of the delegation, a list of accompanying persons and so on," he said.

"Instead of coordinating the terms, procedure and routes of inspections and duration of the stay in Ukraine during the second half of the week we only heard discourse and references to some obscure expert studies but did not receive any reply from the Ukrainian Agriculture Ministry," Onishchenko said.

He said Rospotrebnadzor is ready to conduct a direct dialogue with Ukrainian cheese-makers bypassing the Ukrainian Agriculture Ministry.

"I suggest that the three plants that we named as the first stage of access contact our experts directly. We are ready to switch to a technological mode which is essential for the manufactures without involving the official authority which apparently is reluctant to speedily settle the situation," he said.

On Friday Ukraine’s State Veterinary and Biosecurity Service said it had not received from Rospotrebnadzor official confirmation of its intention to send its experts to Ukraine on March 19 to check Ukrainian cheese-makers.

The Ukrainian side does not know when this visit will take place, the state service told Interfax on Friday.

The state service stressed that Ukraine is ready to host Rospotrebnadzor experts to inspect its cheese makers.

Earlier, Rospotrebnadzor said that it was not ready to start checking Ukrainian cheese makers next week [on March 19-25]. Later Onishchenko criticized Ukraine’s decision to hold an independent study of its cheese-making enterprises.

On February 7, Russia banned imports of cheese produced by some of Ukrainian manufacturers.