No reasons for banning import of meat from EU to Russia

The chief of Russia’s consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, Gennady Onishchenko, sees no reasons for banning the import of meat products from the EU countries. “I can so no reason for a ban,” he told a news conference on Wednesday. “If experts identified meat products with some content of horsemeat, which caused a row in Europe, certain batches of products, or all products would be banned, of course. But there have been no such instances so far,” Onishchenko said. He also remarked that a wholesale ban on the import of products would abuse WTO rules. “Even when there were cases of alcohol poisoning in the Czech Republic, not a single country banned the import. A different principle works there. The country of origin guarantees that substandard products will not leave its territory,” Onishchneko said. At the same time he criticized the system of control in the EU countries, adding that there was no effective system of supervision. “As a WTO member we shall be insisting on and forming at the expert level the opinion the system of supervision must be changed,” he promised. “It would be very wrong to put people’s health at risk for the sake of economic interests.”