On Aug. 6 Russia will extend its embargo on food imports from the United States, European Union member countries, Canada, Norway and Australia by another year, until Aug. 5, 2016.
The Russian government issued a resolution confirming the list of agricultural products, raw materials and food subject to this ban. In its essence, the list remains unchanged – the ban applies to imports of meat, meat products, milk, dairy products, fish, fish products, as well as vegetables and fruit.
At the same time, the list no longer includes trout fry, as well as oyster and mussel spat. This step has been taken in order to increase fish production, set up new fish farms and supporting the existing ones.
However, from now on this list includes “food or ready-to-use products manufactured based on cheese production technologies and containing 1.5 percent of milk fat or more.” Such a measure is expected to create a barrier for imports to Russia of products manufactured based on cheese production technologies, which, however, are not cheese. This concerns products using vegetable fat.
Also new to this year’s list is special conditions for imports of lactose-free milk and dairy products. From now on such products can be imported only for the purposes of nutritional and preventive therapy.
In addition to that, another loophole for bypassing the food embargo was closed this year. Starting from Aug. 6, in accordance with the Russian presidential decree, all food products imported to Russia in violation of the existing embargo must be disposed of. Russia’s agricultural watchdog (Rosselkhoznadzor), the consumer rights watchdog (Rospotrebnadzor) and the Federal Customs Service have been put in charge of this issue.
