Facing tougher sanctions over Ukraine, Russia said that it may ban imports of chicken from the US and fruit from Europe, and is investigating McDonald’s Corp. cheese for safety.
While Russia and the US have long sparred over agricultural trade, the actions fuelled speculation that they could be retaliatory. The 28-nation European Union and the US plan to impose stiffer sanctions to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government.
“It’s a troubling continuation/expansion of trade as a geopolitical tool,” Gary Blumenthal, president of World Perspectives Inc., a Washington-based agricultural consulting firm, said in a phone interview.
Russia’s food safety agency said that it may ban imports of US poultry and some European fruit due to contamination of the products, according Bloomberg BNA, citing Russian state media. The food safety agency, known as Rosselkhoznadzor, also said that it will examine suppliers of McDonald’s cheese for their use of antibiotics.
Russia was the second-largest market, after Mexico, for US chicken last year, according to the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council. The US exported about $309 million worth of broiler chickens to Russia last year, according to the council.
“This is not a surprise,” Mike Cockrell, chief financial officer at Sanderson Farms Inc. of Mississippi, said by phone. “It’s not unusual for Russia to find something wrong when they have a political reason to do so.”
Officials from McDonald’s, based in Illinois, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Cold War
Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in March, the annexation of Crimea and the downing of a Malaysian commercial airliner on 17 July -- which, the US said, was probably caused by a Russian missile -- has evolved into the deepest crisis between Russia and the US and Europe since the Cold War.
The US and EU will act on stiffer sanctions as soon as this week, an Obama administration official said yesterday.
Yevgeniy Khorishko, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, didn’t respond to email or phone messages. Russia has denied involvement in the crash of the jetliner.
Russia will begin a risk assessment of US poultry imports this week due to an outbreak of salmonella earlier this year and may ban the goods in the coming weeks, BNA reported.
“Russia monitors their poultry imports from everywhere very closely,” James Sumner, president of the USA Poultry Council in Stone Mountain, Georgia, said by phone. “I don’t know if this is really any different than is normally the case.”
7 Per Cent
Sumner said until yesterday’s announcement, the situation in Ukraine and has had no impact on the poultry trade between the US and Russia. He said the US depends on Russia for about 7 per cent of its poultry exports, down from as much as 40 per cent in the mid- to late-1990s.
Russia has declined in importance, as US poultry producers have shipped more of their goods to nations including Angola, China and Iraq, according to Cockrell of Sanderson Farms.
“We’d hate to lose it, but it’s not the end of the world if we do,” he said.
In January 2010, Russia cut the amount of chlorine it would allow to be used as a disinfectant on chicken, which effectively banned imports from the US. Seven months later, the government in Moscow agreed to import the meat disinfected with hydrogen peroxide, and the poultry trade with the US soon resumed.
Dairy, Pork
Russia has imposed restrictions on US dairy products, beef and pork, and it bans the import and sale of some frozen poultry from the US used in baby food, according to a March report from the US Trade Representative’s office.
Russia, which joined the World Trade Organisation in 2012, is considering banning some European fruit that includes seeds and pits from the entire EU or from individual member countries, said Alexei Alekseenko, an aide to Rosselkhoznadzor director Sergei Dankvert, BNA reported.
Fruit shipments from the EU have recently contained Oriental fruit moths, he said, according to the Russian news agency RIA. He proposed talks with EU suppliers over the issue.
“Assuming that they take this action, it would be blatant protectionism,” Clayton Yeutter, a US trade representative under President Ronald Reagan, said in a phone interview. “There is little or no legitimacy to their complaints.”
Bloomberg News, edited by ESM
