The Russian veterinary service Rosselkhoznadzor on February 3 said it intended to ban beef imports from NZ from February 6 and would make a decision on fish imports within a fortnight.
The service said the actions were designed to "to ensure the country's food safety" after traces of listeria and the banned feed additive ractopamine were found in NZ beef shipments.
Speaking to Russian media following the announcement the head of the service, Sergey Dankvert, also put dairy in the firing line.
“We are warning NZ suppliers: if the findings are repeated we shall also restrict supplies of butter with fat,” Dankvert is reported as saying.
The actions against beef and fish were not entirely unexpected after Dankvert in October indicated bans were being considered following the discovery of traces of listeria and mercury in imports from NZ.
At the time Dankvert did not mention dairy products.
However, the Ministry for Primary Industries this week said it had been notified in December about the detection of “low level” traces of the veterinary medicine tetracycline in anhydrous milk fat (AMF) imported from NZ.
It was understood Russia had notified NZ of at least two more incidents concerning contaminated dairy products in the past two years.
The string of notifications by the Russians dumbfounded officials here.
In November MPI said the levels of mercury and listeria found in beef and fish through its own testing of the shipments were not enough to breach NZ’s own microbiological and contaminant standards.
The latest discovery was just as confounding because tetracycline had not been registered as a veterinary medicine for farmed animals in NZ since 2011.
Officials in Wellington as well as at the NZ embassy in Moscow had sought meetings with Russian counterparts for months without success.
“We find some of the findings really unusual because the Russians say they are finding substances that are prohibited here. MPI have never found it so why are the Russians finding it?” a Government source said.
The source said NZ was eager for veterinary experts from the two countries to meet to get to the bottom of the Russian test results.
“We need the technical people to talk to understand whether this is really something or is it some sort of cross-contamination in a Russian lab or is it domestic politics or something else.”
As one of the world’s largest food importers Russia has been a significant butter market in the past for NZ.
That trade suffered when Rosselkhoznadzor followed other countries and blacklisted 61 of the 81 factories licensed to export to Russia in response to Fonterra’s botulism scare in 2013.
While the restrictions were lifted by other countries after Fonterra gave its products the all-clear Russia continued to drag its feet.
The trade was only partially restored in late 2015 after 29 factories got the green light to resume export of a limited range of dairy products.
However, butter remained on the prohibited list for the factories blacklisted by the Russians two years earlier.
As a result, NZ’s dairy exports to Russia totalled just $44m in 2015, a far cry from the nearly $200m sold there in 2009.
Repeated requests to Moscow for inspectors to re-audit dairy factories shut out of the Russian market went nowhere and the suspicion in diplomatic circles was that NZ is being punished for siding with the West against Russia over its involvement in Syria and Ukraine.
Former Prime Minister John Key recalled then Trade Minister Tim Groser from Moscow on the eve of a free-trade deal with Russia in early 2014 on diplomatic grounds after Kremlin-backed troops invaded Crimea.
Groser was understood to have further antagonised Moscow by instructing exporters to hold back from filling the gap created by Russia’s ban on food imports from some Western countries.
Another source with Russian connections said while diplomatic retaliation appeared to be one factor in the threats against NZ dairy another was pressure on officials to be seen to be vigilant on food safety.
By making an example of supposedly sub-standard imports the Russian officials were drawing attention away from a host of food safety and animal health problems plaguing local food production. They included African swine fever affecting pork production in southern Russia and bird flu in poultry.
