MOSCOW, December 19 (RIA Novosti) – Russia has imposed a partial ban on dairy imports from the Netherlands, citing safety concerns, amid increasingly strained relations between the two countries.
Russia’s food standards agency has banned import of products from 13 Dutch dairy manufacturers that it said used raw products from suppliers that have no right to export to the Moscow-led Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
The ban, which comes into force Thursday, also applies to dairy products that were found to be past their expired date at the Dutch factories’ storage facilities, the agency said.
Russia announced in October it was tightening checks on dairy imports from the Netherlands, a decision made against the backdrop of rising tensions over Moscow’s arrest of Greenpeace activists and the detention of a Russian diplomat by Dutch police in the Netherlands.
Russian health authorities said preliminary inspections revealed shortcomings in checks on dairy goods by the Dutch authorities.
