WARSAW, Aug. 12 (Xinhua): Polish authorities are trying to counteract against the aggravating situation of Polish food industry, including farmers, breeders and orchard owners and the losses they sustain due to the Russian embargo.
Russia announced on Thursday last week it will ban fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, milk and dairy imports from the United States, the EU, Australia, Canada and Norway. The measures were taken in retaliation for the western sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine crisis.
As far as Polish food production is concerned, different industries have different problems to deal with.
According to Vice President of the Association of Polish Butchers and Meat Producers, Piotr Ziemann, most vulnerable to economic losses are the meat manufacturing plants from east Poland for most of them are of small scale and entirely rely on export to Russia and other eastern countries.
Ziemann also called for attention to the deteriorating situation of producers in Russia's boarder region of Kaliningrad who mostly used to import raw material from Poland. He said that the industry had been affected not only by the embargo, but also by the earlier restrictions on the export after the detection of African swine fever in Poland.
According to preliminary data of the Polish Ministry of Agriculture, in 2013 Poland exported to Russia pork worth 99 million euros (132 million U.S. dollars), beef more than 29 million euros, live poultry 7 million euros and edible offal 6.8 million euros.
Another industry to be hard hit by the embargo is dairy industry, especially the cheese industry. The cheese producers are currently assessing their losses and looking for new sales markets.
Last year, Poland exported dairy products worth 1.6 billion euros, out of which 10 per cent was aimed at Russia. According to the Russian customs service, the value of dairy products import from Poland was 193 million U.S. dollars. Apart from cheese, main dairy products that were exported to Russia are milk, butter, cream, yogurt, cottage cheese, etc.
President of the National Association of Dairy Cooperatives, Waldemar Bros, said that 70 per cent of the dairy export to Russia was cheese, so cheese manufacturers are to suffer most.
The milk production in Poland has been continuously rising recently. Agricultural Market Agency recently reported that in the first three months of the quota year 2014/2015, namely from April to June, the volume of Poland's milk production is about 8 per cent higher than a year before, meaning that probably Poland will exceed the national limit of milk production.
