Russia halts poultry meat imports from California
Russia has placed a temporary ban on poultry meat imports from California because of a recent outbreak of bird flu in the US state.
Low-pathogenic avian influenza, was detected on a Californian quail farm earlier this month, leading to a cull of the infected birds. The farm, in Stanislaus County, near San Francisco has about 95,000 Japanese quail and some 21,000 Peking ducks, according to the OIE.
According to Alexei Alexeenko, the press-secretary of the Russian veterinary watchdog, Washington informed Moscow about the cease of the supply, in accordance with international agreements on actions in case of outbreaks of avian influenza.
It is expected that the supplies will be banned for a period of 90 days, however Russia still may impose further bans if it decides that the actions of the US authorities in fighting the disease are insufficient.
California is the third largest producer of poultry meat among the US states and a large supplier to the Russian market. For the first nine months of last year, Russia imported 267,900 tonnes of broiler meat from the US totaling US$299.5 million, according to the data reported by the Federal Custom Service of Russia.
At the same time experts say that in fact the Russian market will not face any negative impact following this ban.
Join 31,000+ subscribers
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated about all the need-to-know content in the poultry sector, three times a week.
