Head of executive committee of National Meat Association: Poland does not have big influence on Russia’s meat market

The controversy over the ban on the meat import from Poland into Russia will not affect the Russian livestock production market as this situation has been present for many months already – almost since the beginning of 2006, the head of the Executive Committee of the National Meat Association (NMA) Sergey Yushin says in an interview to REGNUM.

To remind, following the ban of Polish beef import into Russia in 2005, Poland put a veto on the elaboration and conclusion of a new agreement on cooperation and partnership with Russia. The new agreement was supposed to replace the old one based on the realities of the 1990s and therefore unprofitable for present-day Russia.

Yushin says that this is more a political problem and it is having almost no effect on the development of Russia’s meat market. In 2006 Russia did not import any beef, pork or poultry from Poland; even more, the Polish import has never been big. In 2005 Russia imported almost 1,500 tons of Polish beef, while the total import was 650,000 tons – that is Poland’s share therein was less than 1%. The volume of pork import from Poland was bigger – 12,500 tons, but the total pork import was as much as 550,000 tons. Yushin notes that even though Poland did not import meat to Russia in 2006, the volume of animals for slaughter increased: almost 18,000 porkers in Jan-Sept 2006. So, one can’t say that the meat import embargo has dealt any big blow on Poland’s agriculture.

The key suppliers of livestock products to Russia are still Latin American countries; the loss of this channel would be much more painful for Russia, says Yushin. Besides, this year there has been certain rise in supplies from the EU (mostly of pork).

A REGNUM correspondent has asked Yushin if the meat import will be reduced as a result of the implementation of the priority national project “Development of Agro-Industrial Complex.” He says that it is early yet to speak about specific results; in order to reduce dependence on import, Russia should build new premises for agricultural enterprises, import new modern equipment, increase the number of livestock. “The present progress is due to the efforts of the previous years,” says Yushin. Nevertheless, the project can and must become an strong magnet for investments and will certainly pave the way for substantial progress in the future. Experts say that real progress will be seen as early as the second half of 2007.

However, in developing the agro-industrial complex and cattle-breeding in particular, one should care for quality rather than quantity. As long as foreign pork is better than the local one, there will be no significant reduction in the import. Today, there are a whole number of enterprises using modern technologies and applying modern approaches and due to them the import dependence will be gradually decreasing, says Yushin.

Source: regnum.ru