Russia accuses Lithuania of illegal pork imports

02-01-2015 | | |
Russia accuses Lithuania of illegal pork imports
Russia accuses Lithuania of illegal pork imports

Lithuania is actively trying to conduct pork fraud and falsify documents to supply pork to the Russian market, according to the representatives of the Russian veterinary body.

The statement of the watchdog says that there has been four cases of pork being illegally imported into Russia from Lithuania in December.

In each case the veterinary specialists sent the meat back or seized it. Russian veterinary specialists are afraid that pork imported from Lithuania may be infected with the African swine fever (ASF) virus.

“In the last case, the consignment, weighing almost 1.2 tonnes, was being driven into Kaliningrad in a van by a resident of Kaliningrad when it was seized by officials from Rosselkhoznador because they were breaking the ban that had been imposed in January,” says the officials of the veterinary body.

In this instance, not only was the consignment breaking the ban but it was also being transported in a van that was not equipped to transport meat, plus the meat had no veterinary certificates or certificates of origin.

Rosselkhoznador has already previously stated that the pork fraud from Baltic States poses a real threat for pork production of the number of Russian regions, including Kaliningrad Oblast and even apply Interpol has been requested to help fight against it.

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Vorotnikov
Vladislav Vorotnikov Eastern Europe correspondent