Russians delay switch to pelagic imports from Russia-approved Norwegian plants

The Russian and Norwegian authorities have agreed to postpone the deadline for the switch to pelagic imports from Russia-approved Norwegian plants affecting such pelagic species as herring, mackerel and capelin. More specifically, the deadline has been moved from 15 December 2007 to 25 January 2008, according to Prime-Tass.

On 30 October 2007 the Norwegian Food Safety Authority informed that it had received a notification from Russia's Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance Rosselkhoznadzor according to which as of 15 November 2007 Russia should have stopped importing pelagic fish from most of the Norwegian plants. The document said that the Russian vets had approved only 7 out of 43 Norwegian exporters of herring and mackerel willing to supply their products to Russia.

Later on, in the course of a series of consultations in Moscow and Oslo, the sides reached an agreement to move the deadline of the above mentioned pelagic species to 15 December. In the end of November 2007 a group of Russian vet inspectors came to Norway to check 15 Norwegian herring and mackerel exporters to possibly expand the list of suppliers before the latest deadline.

Russia is Norway's main herring market with the country's total imports of Norwegian pelagics amounting to 1.2 billion NOK equal to more than 222 million USD. It is not clear if the new import regime will affect the volumes because salmon has been imported from approved plants only for some time with the sales to the Russian Federation rising all the same.