Russia starts destroying smuggled Western food

MOSCOW — Russian officials on Thursday steamrollered tonnes of cheese as they began a  controversial drive to destroy Western food smuggled into the crisis-hit country despite a public outcry. 

President Vladimir Putin last week signed a decree ordering the trashing of all food, from gourmet cheeses to fruit and vegetables, that breaches a year-old embargo on Western imports imposed in retaliation to sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

Russian television showed officials dumping truckloads of round bright orange cheeses on a patch of wasteland and then driving over them with a steamroller in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine.

The cheeses arrived from Ukraine in unmarked boxes, but "were most likely produced in the European Union", a reporter said.

A spokeswoman for the food safety agency Rosselkhoznadzor said the flattened cheese, amounting to almost 9 tonnes, would be buried underground.

"From today, agricultural produce, raw products and foods, which come from a country that has decided to impose economic sanctions on Russian legal entities or individuals... and which are banned from import into Russia, are due to be destroyed," the agriculture ministry said in a statement.

Moscow last year banned a slew of food products from the West, ranging from delicacies such as Parmesan, pate and Spanish hams and to staples such as apples. 

Russia complains that some importers are circumventing the ban by illegally slapping on new labels that claim the food was produced in neighbouring ex-Soviet countries.

The food safety agency has said it planned to destroy several hundred tonnes of contraband produce on Thursday that has already been seized.

Two truckloads of European tomatoes and three of nectarines and peaches were being smashed with a tractor and bulldozer in the Smolensk region, after they arrived with fake documents, the food safety agency said.

One truck driver carrying a cargo of suspicious tomatoes turned his vehicle around and made a getaway back into Belarus to avoid them being destroyed, Rosselkhoznadzor added.

A source in the food safety agency warned that officials who opted to "destroy" gourmet delicacies by eating them would face criminal charges, pro-Kremlin Izvestia daily reported.

'Display of barbarity' 

The decision to destroy the food has prompted a rare outburst of public ire as the economic crisis roiling the country has pushed millions of Russians into poverty and made it harder for them to afford basic foods.

"This is no ordinary measure. This is a display of barbarity, a challenge to society, a refusal to see the ethical side, where it is most important," Vedomosti business daily wrote in a front-page editorial.

On Thursday, more than 265,000 Russians had signed an online petition on website Change.org calling for seized food to be given away to the needy.

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who normally toes the Kremlin line, said the move was "extreme" and proposed sending the food to orphanages and to the separatist pro-Russian regions of eastern Ukraine.

The first food destruction came as Russia's ruble hit 70 to the euro for the first time since March and 64.4 against the dollar for the first time since February. 

A recent drop in crude prices has put the ruble under renewed pressure as the Russian economy is highly dependent on oil.

The perceived absurdity of the food destruction campaign prompted an outpouring of black humour.

"'In Belgorod they have begun destroying 10 tonnes of cheese' — the news agencies are reporting it like our troops are advancing on the Second Ukrainian Front," wrote opposition politician Alexei Navalny on Twitter.

"The euro is at 70 the ruble, the dollar is at 60? Quick, let's distract them: set fire to the Parmesan!" wrote a Twitter account parodying the foreign ministry, @Fake_MIDRF.

Separately, Larisa Sukhanova says she's worried about the future of her milk business as a year-old embargo on Western foodstuffs fails to yield a promised bonanza for local farmers.

While authorities present the embargo enacted in reprisal for Western sanctions over Ukraine as an opportunity to develop the country's flagging farming sector, analysts say the crippling economic crisis roiling the country, and years of the state's neglect of agriculture, have seen local producers struggle to make gains. 

"The government has been paying more attention to us farmers," Sukhanova, 68, told AFP as she milks a stubborn goat at her farm just outside Moscow. "But I can't say I see much of a difference."

The authorities have pledged some $3.8 billion (3.5 billion euros) to help Russian farmers bolster their production of substitutes for the long list of embargoed goods, which range from luxury French cheeses to Spanish hams and Polish apples. 

But Sukhanova, who produces some 200 litres of milk a day, says that a 10-million-ruble ($159,000) grant she was promised in March to expand her farm has yet to materialise. 

"I needed that grant money months ago," she said. "Now I'm afraid I will have nowhere to keep my goats this winter."

Struggling to fill the gap

Agriculture is one of the few bright spots in the Russian economy, growing in the first quarter of 2015, despite the economy as a whole sinking into recession on the back of Western sanctions and low oil prices.

Meat production increased by 6.4 per cent in comparison to the first quarter of 2014, official statistics show, and producers like Sukhanova added an additional one per cent to the country's milk output.  

A bullish Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachyov has gone as far as to predict that Russian products will have replaced all foreign foods on supermarket shelves within a decade. 

But the increase in production has still fallen well short of filling the gap left by the embargo and experts are doubtful that the ban is spurring genuine improvements in the industry. 

"The embargo did eliminate some serious competitors from the Russian market, but the pre-existing problems in the agriculture industry have not disappeared," Leonid Kholod, a former deputy agriculture minister, indicated.

Insufficient credit for farmers, underdeveloped infrastructure, outdated equipment and the absence of a comprehensive technology policy are enduring problems plaguing Russian agriculture.

"If we want to be able to substitute anything in ten years, there are lots of other things that need to be done," he said.   

Tatyana Bobrovskaya, associate director at Fitch Ratings in Russia, said that given no one knows how long the embargo will last, few are willing to make investments in sectors like beef and milk production that take a long time to pay off. 

Rusagro, one of Russia's largest agricultural holdings, recently said it would not undertake new projects until it secured additional state support.

The shortfall on the market has added to the hardship of ordinary Russians, with food prices surging due to the embargo as well as the plunging value of the ruble.  

In the dairy sector, while Russian cheese makers have boosted production, they are stymied by an undersupply of milk, with local producers unable to make up for a 65 per cent drop in imports. 

Meat production was up 18 per cent in the first two months of the year compared with the same period in 2014, but with imports down 62 per cent local producers still have a gap to fill there also. 

Meanwhile, the weak ruble is driving up the cost of key inputs like feed and fertiliser.

"For Russian food companies, the benefits of temporarily reduced competition from banned products have been muted by the adverse effects of the ruble depreciation," Bobrovskaya said.

Goat farmer Sukhanova said the price of fodder had increased by 60 per cent and that of obligatory testing on the quality of the milk had increased more than sevenfold.

"This is insanity," she added.

Patriotism served cold

While Russian producers are struggling to fill the gap, the Kremlin has ramped up its rhetoric on the importance of buying local and the dangers of embargoed products. 

It's not just officials that are keen to crackdown on Western goods. 

On a recent afternoon a handful of pro-Kremlin youngsters from a group called "Eat Russian!" conducted a spot inspection at a high-end Moscow supermarket, slapping stickers on products they claimed were being sold illegally.

"The group was founded ahead of the embargo because it was tough to find Russian products in grocery stores," Margarita Cherkashina, an activist from the group, told AFP.

"Now we want to protect the population from dangerous embargoed products that come into the country without the required safety checks."