OREANDA-NEWS. June 07, 2013. Competitive ability of the products of domestic livestock sector to a considerable extent depends on efficient control over biological and food safety. That was the keynote idea of a meeting of the Working Group of the Expert Council of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) on Agro-Industrial Complex that focused on improving a system of veterinary regulation in the Russian Federation.

The meeting of the Working Group on 31st May 2013 was attended by representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance, the Eurasian Economic Commission, and representatives of the business community.

The meeting of the Working Group was opened by Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsyganov, who emphasized that the WG meeting was organized as part of exercising the instructions issued following-up a meeting in the Office of the Prime-Minister Dmitry Medvedev on additional state support for developing livestock breeding in the Russian Federation on 16th April 2013, and in view of numerous petitions from economic entities regarding actions by the authorities, related to state veterinary regulation, particularly, complaints about high prices for veterinary services rendered at the level of the constituent territories of the Russian Federation.

Sergey Gudkov, Executive Director of the Fish Union, outlined the main problems in fishing and livestock breeding that adversely affect food and biological safety amidst joining WTO. Such problems include the costs and the procedures of drawing and registering accompanying veterinary documentation; absence of veterinary rules, particularly, in circulation of veterinary medicines, which puts circulation of meat and vegetable raw products to a halt in the most part of the Russian Federation if unsafe products are identifies, and restricts export fur to absence of veterinary rules equivalent to the world standards. He also paid attention to absence of unified regulation across the entire product supply chain and lack of interaction between the regulators.

All these factors generate high costs for business, especially in retail. For instance, as stated by Sergey Gudkov, a food retailer - X5 Retail Group spends over 500 million Rubles per year only for registering accompanying veterinary documents; for Russia in general the figure is approximately 10 billion Rubles. To reduced the costs of registering accompanying veterinary documents for business an automated system of electronic veterinary certification was proposed that would b\have been free for businesses. The issue was raised repeatedly at the level of the Government of the Russian Federation but the instructions were not completed due to unknown reasons.

Musheg Mamikonyan, President of the Meat Union of Russia, highlighted some issues of support for the pig-breeding and processing sectors, pointing out that it must be coordinated with support for the processing industry, which by 2015 must learn how to under the conditions of significant liberalization of Russian markets of meat products processing. “Low pork prices are of economic advantage for processers as well as for end consumers. At the same time it is necessary to adopt measures towards increasing state support of efficient pork producers”. Musheg Mamikonyan also pointed out that strong regulatory bodies are an important instrument for protecting domestic market.

Sergey Yushin, the Head of the Executive Committee of the National Meat Association, in his turn, brought to notice that the Government of the Russian Federation proclaimed a policy of transforming Russia into the largest importer of ecologically clean agricultural products and the relevant instructions were given to the Ministry of Agriculture. As stressed by Sergey Yushin, achieving such an objective, however, is impossible without reforming veterinary regulation.

The Working Group was very interested in the speech of Nikolay Vlasov, Deputy Head of the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance, who pointed out that creating “efficient team chain” in the veterinary sector would be an important element of promoting Russian products on external markets. As stated by Nikolay Vlasov, the functions for regulating and monitoring the epizootic situation must be exercised at the federal level, while accompanying veterinary documentation must be provided electronically free-of-charge (to reduce the costs).

The issue of electronic certification is closely connected to the issue of creating as tracking system for livestock products – “from the field to the counter”, for implementing which all necessary electronic systems are already created. ВIt is based on an electronic register of industrial batches and an electronic certification of the so-called “transaction batches”, which enable to track batch movements партии (particularly, in view of it6s segmentation). “The procedures for implementing veterinary rules should be the same for everyone, and the implementation mechanism must be as simple as possible”, said Nikolay Vlasov. “The electronic schemes are already created; it is simply necessary to pass a normative act legalizing them”.

“The proposals put forward at the meeting of the Working Group, will form the basis of FAS proposals for improving regulatory mechanisms for the meat market as part of executing the instructions of the Prime Minister”, commented the Head of FAS Department for Control over Chemical Industry and Agro-Industry, Anna Mirochinenko.