MINSK, 2 December (BelTA) - Belarus will strengthen the phytosanitary and veterinary controls on the border with the Russian Federation, Alexei Bogdanov, the head of the Central Office for Foreign Economic Activities of the Belarusian Agriculture and Food Ministry, told BelTA.
"A meeting was held between the Agriculture Ministers of Russia and Belarus to discuss the issues of cooperation between the veterinary and phytosanitary services of the two countries in connection with the adoption by Russia of special economic measures against Turkey. We have agreed to work more closely on this issue, and also made assurances that Belarus will strengthen the phytosanitary and veterinary controls on the border to prevent the illicit re-export of the goods against which Russia applied the special economic measures,” Alexei Bogdanov stressed.
According to him, within one or two days Rosselkhoznadzor will give the Belarusian side the information about the countries where phytosanitary certificates are most often counterfeited. Then this information will be communicated to the border control authorities of Belarus. “Counterfeit phytosanitary certificates are not made in Belarus. They are made in the country where the cargo goes from. A simple example: a batch of apples from Congo arrives at the border, with a phytosanitary certificate attached. How to determine whether it is authentic or not? Logically it is clear that apples do not grow in Congo. We had no complete information based on which we can determine that the certificate is a fake. But with the database from Rosselkhoznadzor we can better identify such violations,” he said.
During the meeting in Moscow the parties also raised the issue regarding the Belarusian dairy plants. It was earlier reported that starting 7 December Rosselkhoznadzor would ban the deliveries from five dairy plants of Belarus. "This issue was settled yesterday. The problem was that our enterprises did not manage to send the documents which Rosselkhoznadzor requested during an inspection in October. The Russian colleagues will get these documents within a couple of days. The Russian food watchdog does not have major complaints as regards our dairy plants,” Alexei Bogdanov said.
