Russia resumes pork and beef imports from Brazil

Russia resumed the import of beef and pork from 12 Brazilian units in late November 2021, Brazil’s health security regulator reported.

Most of the restrictions on Brazilian beef and pork had been in place since 2017. The reason was related to allegations of ractopamine usage for animal feeding, which Brazilian groups in the meat industry denied.

In October 2021, Russia had already allowed the resuming of beef imports from 3 major Brazilian exporters. The new release, late November, applied to another 12 facilities, 9 for pork and 3 for beef.

The Russian department Rosselkhoznadzor did not reveal which units received the new status. The Russian watchdog on sanitary topics stated, “Rosselkhoznadzor continues to work on expanding the list of Brazilian producers certified to supply beef and pork to Russia.”

The announcement comes after Brazilian Agriculture minister Tereza Cristina met in the Russian capital Moscow with Sergey Dankvert, the head of Rosselkhoznadzor. During the meeting, he also guaranteed the realisation of an inspection visit to Brazil in the 1st quarter of 2022, aimed at qualifying new Brazilian meatpacking plants for exports.

The current tariff by the Russians is 15% on imports until 530,000 tonnes of Brazilian meat. That is part of Moscow’s measures, aiming to stabilise domestic inflation, which has never been so high in the last 5 years.

 

Daniel Azevedo / Pig Progress