OREANDA-NEWS. July 16, 2010. Prevention of low-quality products import and smuggling must be under permanent control. Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Viktor Slauta said this at a meeting of the Coordination Council for Agricultural Policy under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Participants of the meeting discussed such issues as the domestic meat market, observation of laws and measures to strengthen control over safety and quality of animal products exported to Ukraine.

As reported the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, according to latest update, during the first half of this year despite the fact that imports of poultry and pork declined by nearly 30 percent, the share of low-quality meat increased, in particular poultry - by 7 percent, and pork – 33 percent.

"This issue has two ends. According to the predicted balance of the Ministry of Economy, in 2010 we satisfy 87-90 percent of our needs in meat by own production, but 300-340 thousand tons we have to import", said the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine .

According to him, given that during the past 18 years implementation of the cattle and poultry slaughtering decreased significantly, this refers, on the one hand, to restoring the balance of rational production and consumption of meat in the country and, on the other - protecting domestic consumers from low-quality meat products damaging the health of our citizens and causing losses to producers of high quality domestic products.

As for this matter, in this part there are objective preconditions, because the world meat market is growing. "Given the forecast of 2010, for five years global meat production will increase by almost 9 percent, pork - by 9 percent, broilers and turkeys – 16 percent, and the volume of world meat imports – 11 percent. In general, it is clear that in the context of the membership in the WTO Ukraine has already felt the pressure of foreign meat production on the domestic market and can not raise unjustified barriers to its imports", said Victor Slauta.

Therefore to solve these problems participants of the meeting have been proposed to establish an interagency working group on development of animal products market, develop measures to prevent random fluctuations in the wholesale and retail consumer markets, as well as proposals to protect domestic producers of animal products.