“Cheese war” going on

The new sanctions of the Russian Health and Consumer Rights Agency (Rospotrebnadzor) have not yet affected the performance of the Lozova cheese factory, factory manager Yurii Zimenkov told The Day. He hopes that closures of the Russian market in the future will also have no essential negative consequences for the factory and may even be of some help. “We will be focusing more on the domestic market,” he reassured The Day. Yet Lozova cheese-makers are unlikely to confine themselves to Ukrainian shop counters alone. It will be recalled that a little more than three months ago Vitalii Aleksiichuk, Deputy Chairman of the Kharkiv Oblast Administration, said that the Lozova cheese factory was going to export its products to Kazakhstan. The enterprise had to take this step after Russia had imposed an embargo on its products on February 27. The Russian market seems to have closed for a long time for the Kharkiv region-based dairy facility because recently (a little less than six months since the embargo was imposed) the Russian public hygiene service denied the Lozova Dairy Works the possibility to resume the sales of cheese on Russian markets owing to “a formalistic approach to preparing sample products” and a similar attitude to establishing production inspection and identification of the produced cheese and the related products. “This makes it impossible to decide to allow the products of this enterprise onto the Russian market,” Russian sanitary service experts conclude in their verdict. Incidentally, it is the first of the seven cheese factories that “outraged” the Russian food-hygiene inspectors.

Rospotrebnadzor claims that Ukraine itself is reluctant to work out a “ceasefire” in the cheese war. “Rospotrebnadzor has not yet received from the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine the complete information on what Ukrainian laboratories have done to examine the cheeses to be supplied to the Russian market,” the agency’s press service says. The Ukrainian food-hygiene officials replied to this that they were ready to sign a memorandum of cooperation with their Russian counterparts in the near future. The promise to finish the text of the agreement immediately after it is approved at Ukrainian ministries and agencies. “This memorandum is now being examined. Derzhspozhyvinspektsia expects the document to be approved in the near future, and the memorandum will be sent for signing to the Russian side through diplomatic channels,” Serhii Orekhov, Chairman of the State Inspectorate for Consumer Rights Protection (Derzhspozhyvinspektsia), said. He also emphasized that this memorandum is a joint decision of Ukrainian and Russian experts, which was made later last month at a meeting with Rospotrebnadzor chief Gennady Onishchenko in Kyiv.

Orekhov expects the memorandum to be signed by September 1 this year. Moreover, the expert noted that he felt no tension in the relations between Rospotrebnadzor and Derzhspozhyvinspektsia. As for the Russian counterparts’ allegations that Ukraine has foiled the agreements on the cheese problem, the expert pointed out that the Ukrainian side had offered Rospotrebnadzor six laboratories of the Ministry for Agrarian Policies and Food of Ukraine and two laboratories of the state-run businesses under the jurisdiction of the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade. According to Orekhov, the Russian side opted for the two latter laboratories only.

The Russian Federation will become full member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on August 1. The Ministry for Agrarian Policies and Food of Ukraine used to pin high hopes on this, considering that as soon as Russia joined the WTO club, relations between our countries would be warmer. If not, the head of the abovementioned Ukrainian ministry promised to complain. “We will appeal to the WTO,” he told journalists later last winter, when the “cheese battle” was in full swing. “Russia is not yet a full-fledged WTO member. They will gain this status only in July and, naturally, they will also have commitments in this (agrarian) sector,” the minister said.

Ukraine is now supplying to the Russian market only one fourth of the cheese it had exported before the embargo was imposed. The greenlighted Ukrainian companies are the Ros private enterprise (subsidiary of the Okhtyrka Cheese Works), Hadiachsyr Plc., the Pyriatyn Cheese Factory joint-stock company, and the Prometei industrial commercial firm (subsidiaries Mensky and Dubnomoloko). The product samples of these five factories have passed the Rospotrebnadzor laboratory inspection. Asked some time ago about present-day deliveries of Ukrainian cheese to the Russian market, the Rospotrebnadzor chief said they were a far cry from what they were before the crisis. “Five factories were allowed to supply, but in reality only four are doing so,” Onishchenko emphasized. Yet he did not mention which of the “lucky ones” that received permission failed to take advantage of it. Still banned are the products of the Bashtanka and Lozova cheese factories, the Bel Shostka Ukraine enterprise, and the Khmelnytsky butter and cheese facility.