Within days of being in Russia to make a direct pitch for the reopening of the Russian market to Canadian swine and pork, trade minister Stockwell Day got part of his wish.
On July 3, Day announced he had received a letter from the Russian embassy in Ottawa informing him that some of the restrictions had been lifted.
The Russian ban has been lifted on pork and pork products from Quebec produced before June 2 and after June 30. However, the news was not as good for Ontario.
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Russia will continue the ban on Ontario pork products, although import restrictions on Ontario beef and poultry were lifted.
Canada Pork International executive director Jacques Pomerleau said the announcement is significant because the Russians are protectionist and this is the first time they have agreed to negotiate a lifting of some barriers.
“It is a significant development that they moved even a little because they are not part of WTO (World Trade Organization) and they can do as they please.”
But he said the actual amount of pork that might move because of the lift in restrictions is small, because Russia last year removed the right of all but two Quebec plants to sell product into the country.
“We do not accept their reasons and a bigger deal will be getting those plants listed again,” said Pomerleau.
“A bigger deal will be lifting the ban on Ontario.”
He said even before the H1N1 flu issue erupted, Canadian sales to Russia were down from last year’s pace. In 2008, Canada shipped 129,730 tonnes of pork to what was its third largest customer.
In Russia, Day had bluntly told Russian agriculture minister Elena Skrynnik that there was no scientific justification to restrict Canadian pork because of the presence of H1N1 in Canada.
When she noted there are proportionately more cases of the flu in Canada than in the United States, he said that is irrelevant.
“The fact is the virus is not transmitted in the meat,” Day told a later news conference.
On a suggestion by Day, the Russians agreed to a briefing from Canadian Food Inspection Agency officials on the scientific evidence that pigs or pork are not the source or carriers of the flu that has now been declared a worldwide pandemic.
However, while the Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance accepted the science for Quebec pork, it apparently still has doubts about product from Ontario.
Pomerleau said the Ontario ban remains because of the concentration of human flu cases in the province, which means the Russians still connect pork with the spread of the disease.
Although Russia has not been a huge market for Canadian pork this year with just 21,000 tonnes shipped by the end of April, Day and agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said July 3 every market opening sends a message to other countries that a ban based on the H1N1 flu is not justified under science-based sanitary rules negotiated under trade deals.
Ritz called it “a significant breakthrough for Canadian pork exporters.”
