Dairy lobby seized the moment
European integration of Ukraine is “not settled” yet, but Russian dairy market participants already propose to stop dairy import from this country to Russia for 2 years or to put tax on it. Souzmoloko (National Dairy Producers Union) is concerned that Ukraine can become a transit corridor for cheap European milk.
According to Souzmoloko due to the high level of government support average raw milk price in Europe is lower than in Russia: 0.4€ and 0.55€ accordingly. In the first half of 2013 Ukraine produced 50,000 of SMP, 0.7% of which was exported to Russia. Production of cheese totaled 170,000, export to Russia reached 10.5%.
Meanwhile, head of the Department of Animal Husbandry and Breeding at Russian Ministry of Agriculture, Vladimir Labinov believes this measure to be useless, because import from Ukraine is very small, by the way Russian requirements to European products are not strict and touch only its safety.