Russia’s “Cheese Assault,” a secondary operation against Ukraine that the Kremlin has launched against the backdrop of the ongoing gas conflict, looks a petty sabotage started just to annoy the “enemy” which is going on the offensive. However, Ukrainian MP Oleksii Plotnikov (Party of Regions) believes this Russian antic to be far worse than an innocent prank. “I would call it public terrorism as these are public actions,” he says. “These are unfriendly steps, they are economically unjustified, too, and I think we should use our leverage with WTO as Russia is entering this organization and will become its full member come this May.”
Let us recall that the head of Russia’s Federal Service on Customers’ Rights Protection and Human Well-being Surveillance (Rospotrebnadzor), chief state sanitary doctor of Russia Gennadii Onishchenko said on January 12 that his agency, having reviewed the situation in the dairy segment of consumer market, concluded that “there was a marked decline in consumer properties of Ukrainian-supplied cheese in the fourth quarter of 2011. The main problem,” Russia’s chief sanitary doctor continued, “is uncontrolled use of vegetable components, particularly palm oil, by Ukrainian cheese producers. Russian standards, primarily technical regulations for milk and dairy products, require those products that contain large quantities of palm oil to be called ‘cheese-containing products,’ and not ‘cheese.’”
Head of Ukraine’s State Veterinary Service Ivan Bisiuk explains that Ukrainian firms have the right to export both types of dairy products, and one cannot accuse them of falsification or substitution of one product for another unless a particular batch that came from Ukraine to Russia was subjected to the appropriate test on the border of two states. In any case, Bisiuk says, complaints should not be made through media briefings.
President of the Ukrainian Agrarian Business Club Association Alex Lissitsa exposed to journalists the origins of cheese terrorism. In his opinion, “this provocation (Onishchenko’s statements) was not conceived in Moscow; it is an action of our fellow Ukrainians who alerted their colleagues in Russia.” It stems from the Ministry of Health and Sanitary Epidemiological Service of Ukraine’s unease as these institutions are losing control powers over the quality of food.
The expert fears that should Russia impose sanctions on Ukrainian cheese, purchasing prices for milk at household farms in this country can fall by 30 percent, which in turn can lead to increased slaughter of cattle. “Ukraine needs to diversify markets for its dairy exports,” Lissitsa advises (according to him, Ukraine should be able to enter markets of the EU, North Africa, Saudi Arabia, Israel), “because we had heard such statements from Russia more than once, sanctions had been imposed in the past, and some companies had even gone bankrupt because of them.” Such fears are not without grounds. State Statistical Committee reported recently that Ukraine’s total cattle numbers decreased by 0.5 percent in 2011, while cow numbers fell by 1.6 percent, continuing a steady trend of reducing the national dairy herd that has developed in previous years.
To defend Ukrainian cheese, the country’s “heavy artillery” came forward in the person of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov. “Should our Russian colleagues restrict access of Ukrainian goods on their market,” he said in Khmelnytsky, and his visit to the city was no coincidence, too, he added, “they would suffer most of all, because our cheeses are of good quality and cost less. Therefore, Russian citizens would be forced to buy more expensive Polish cheeses or face price increase that is usual consequence of national market closures.” The prime minister assured the audience: “We will press hard on all these issues at the nearest meeting between the leaders of Ukraine and Russia. I tasted the cheeses, there is a video record of it, and learned about the technology,” the prime minister told the press, “and I can now confidently tell my Russian partners and colleagues that their cheese factories’ products’ quality is far behind ours. Our products are of high quality, we adhere to all standards, and all complaints are without merit.” More to it, Azarov reminded that Russian complaints concerned six Ukrainian enterprises which did not supply their products to the Russian market at all. By the way, The Day’s Cherkasy reporter Viktoria Kobyliatska reports that Russia clearly erred in calling “Zvenyhorodsky” hard cheese substandard, as the company had stopped supplying its cheeses to the Russian Federation back in January 2006, we were told by the Cherkasy regional state administration. The administration’s officials cited director of Cherkasy Standards and Metrology state enterprise Viktor Bilousov as their source.
The Day also called Belle Shostka Ukraine and inquired if this well-known domestic producer faced any hurdles when exporting its products to Russia. The company’s director of external relations Natalia Fesiun reported that it had met no problems when exporting cheese to that country. As for other Ukrainian enterprises that were mentioned in the Rospotrebnadzor’s “black list,” Fesiun saw it as outright madness and strictly political action, since none of them supplied their products to Russia. “How can one check the quality of cheeses in such circumstances and how, without checking, can one say anything about it?” the specialist asks, and adds: “It is a real shame.”
