KIEV, February 23 (Itar-Tass) —— Ukrainian cheeses must undergo international examination and testing, the speaker of parliament, Vladimir Litvin, said late Wednesday evening.
“I believe that if Ukrainian producers are 100 percent certain these cheeses match all international and European standards, then they must undergo the examination and evaluation by international experts,” he said on television.
“There should be clarity as to how much palm oil our manufacturers put in their products and an international certificate stating it unequivocally that our cheeses are beyond suspicion,” Litvin said. He is certain that losses from the “cheese war” with Russia will be tangible for the country’s budget in general.
Earlier, the chief of Russia’s consumer rights watchdog, Gennady Onishchenko, said that the Russian market was prepared to have Ukrainian cheeses of proper quality.
“We are working intensively with the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture,” he said. The ban imposed on some Ukrainian cheeses at the beginning of February was due to the abuse of Russian technological rules.
“The cheeses contained cheap oil, I have no doubts about that,” Onishchenko said.