Serbia has not had any problems in fruit trade with Russia and it has exported nearly 70,000 tons of apples in 2012 and in the first two months of this year, Evica Mihaljevic of the Fruits of Serbia Association told Tanjug Tuesday.
The domestic regulations in this sphere were made to conform to Russian ones that are completely equivalent with relevant European standards as early as in 2008 and 2009, Mihaljevic said, commenting on a release issued by Russia’s Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor) that fruits containing too much pesticide have been imported to the country from Serbia.
Russia is buying a lot of Serbia’s apples. In fact, as much as 90 to 95 percent of the total exported quantities of the fruit from Serbia in 2012 and the first two months of 2013 ended up on the market of that country.
“We have harmonized the Serbian standards, we are carrying out analyses in accredited laboratories of individual types, of pesticide residues, nitrates and the parameters according to customers’ request,” Mihaljevic said.
She said she has no detailed information on the case of fruit exports to Russia, but stressed it is essential that all fruit growers in Serbia implement the GlobalGAP standard.
Mihaljevic pointed out that this system implies monitoring good practices from beginning to end of the production chain, making it easy to determine where problems are likely to occur.
Rosselkhoznadzor has said in a release that the Grain Quality Assessment Center’s central laboratory has found that Russia has imported a total of 413.5 tons of low-quality fruit and vegetables, including imports from Serbia.
The imported fruit and vegetables contained pesticides and nitrates in quantities exceeding the maximum allowed concentrations, according to the release, posted on the Rosselkhoznadzor website.
The dangerous products of plant origin included 19.5 tons of grapes, 19.6 tons of pomegranate, seven tons of zucchini, 56.1 tons of cucumbers and 311.3 tons of apples.
The biggest quantity of the faulty products, mainly apples, arrived from Poland, and the rest was imported from Serbia, Turkey and Italy, Rosselkhoznadzor said.
Source Tanjug
