MOSCOW, October 10 (RIA Novosti) - Rosselkhoznadzor, a Russian agency which is responsible for ensuring food quality and safety, has banned the re-export of fruit and vegetables through Poland, Kommersant reports.
The agency’s press secretary Yulia Trofimova told the press that the agency had “identified cases of [Poland] supplying us with their products under the guise of re-export.”
The ban will subsequently affect not only the hidden Polish produce, but also that of other countries which send their goods through Poland for unloading and reshipment to Russia.
Earlier, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Grzegorz Schetyna noted that Poland had planned to demand the further tightening of sanctions against Russia. Poland has faced problems offloading some of its agricultural produce, including apples, 677,000 tons of which had earlier gone to Russia. The country has been carrying out a social media campaign, “Eating Apples to Annoy Putin”, in the midst of Russian sanctions against the import of certain food from Europe, the Economist had reported earlier.
Importantly, the current ban will also affect seeds. Russia had earlier excluded potato, onion, corn and pea seeds from its list of restricted food products, Russian news site Lenta.ru noted.
Russia’s one-year countersanctions ban on food products began in August, and includes fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry, fish and dairy products from the countries of the EU, the US, Canada, Australia and Norway, which had introduced several rounds of sanctions against Russia earlier this year.
Since then, Russia has signed agreements on the purchase of food from countries throughout the world, including Argentina, Turkey, Egypt and China, among others.
