There are no systemic threats to Russian food security after Russia’s embargo on food imports from western countries in response to sanctions over Ukraine, the chief of the Federal Antimonopoly Service told reporters on Monday.
Igor Artemyev said there were no global changes in food prices, and the wave of price hike expectations was subsiding.
“Contracts are substituted by others. Practically any product can be bought in other countries (not hit by the food sanctions),” he said.
Norwegian fish could be replaced with Chilean fish, for example, he said, admitting that this could slightly increase prices because of higher transportation costs.
“All this means there are no systemic threats to food security, while huge crops that we are having in the Russian Federation and in the Customs Union (of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan) on the whole mean that we don’t just have bread - we have fodder grain, fodder, and thus we will have good figures on meat,” Artemyev said.
In response to Western sanctions over Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on August 6 to ban for one year the imports of agricultural, raw and food products from the countries, which imposed sanctions against Russia.
The list of the banned products includes cattle meat (fresh, chilled and refrigerated), pork (fresh, chilled and refrigerated), poultry meat and all poultry edible by-products, salted meat, pickled meat, dried meat, smoked meat, fish and shell fish, clams and other water invertebrates, milk and dairy products, vegetables, edible roots and tuber crops, fruits and nuts, sausage and analogous meat products, meat by-products or blood, as well as products made of them, ready-to-eat products including cheeses and cottage-cheese based on vegetable fats.