Ukraine is not to ban imports of vegetables from the European Union, where an E. coli outbreak has sickened 1,500 people and killed 17, Ukraine's Agrarian Policy and Food Minister Mykola Prysiazhniuk has said.
"We decided to avoid imposing radical restrictions, and instead we are conducting full checks on vegetables imported from the EU," he told reporters in Kyiv on Thursday.
The minister stressed that all respective agencies have been instructed to restrict imports of products that do not meet phytosanitary standards in Ukraine.
Prysiazhniuk said prior statements that Spanish cucumbers were the source of infection have been retracted by Germany, and the situation is being investigated.
Earlier Ukrainian Premier Mykola Azarov reported that Ukraine had tightened its checks on vegetable imports from the European Union.
An E. coli epidemic has broken out in several European countries. Experts are struggling to pin down the exact source of the infection, and say the outbreak was caused by a new strain of the bacteria.
As of today, 16 residents of Germany and a resident of Sweden have died of the infection.
New cases of infection have been reported in the Czech Republic and the United States.
