MOSCOW, August 26. /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian agricultural watchdog (Rosselkhoznadzor) has detained a large batch of Latvian sprats over problems with documents, the regulator said on Tuesday.
The clearance procedures for the batch weighing over 15 tons were suspended as the veterinary certificate and the batch markings indicated different producers, the agricultural watchdog said in a statement.
The Latvian products were also registered under a wrong permission in the customs electronic system for importation into the territory of the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the statement said.
The products were taken into custody and proceedings on an administrative offense were launched.
Sprats and canned fish have been excluded from Russia’s food embargo imposed in response to Western sanctions.
Russia's sanctions
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in early August to ban for one year the imports of agricultural, raw and food products from the countries that imposed sanctions against Russia over its stance on the developments in neighboring Ukraine.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced that the Russian government had imposed a one-year ban on imports of beef, pork, poultry, fish, cheeses, fruit, vegetables and dairy products from Australia, Canada, the European Union, the United States and Norway.
The list of the banned products includes cattle meat (fresh, chilled and refrigerated), pork (fresh, chilled and refrigerated), poultry meat and all poultry edible by-products, salted meat, pickled meat, dried meat, smoked meat, fish and shell fish, clams and other water invertebrates, milk and dairy products, vegetables, edible roots and tuber crops, fruits and nuts, sausage and analogous meat products, meat by-products or blood, as well as products made of them, ready-to-eat products including cheeses and cottage-cheese based on vegetable fats.
According to various estimates by European experts, Russia’s food sanctions block EU’s exports worth a total of over €7 billion ($9.4 billion).