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The head of Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia's Federal Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance Service, Sergei Dankvert said on Tuesday that his country will ban tomato and pepper imports from Morocco.
Interviewed by Russia news agency TASS, the official explained that Russia has «shown everyone that they must pay attention to the risks when exporting certain products».
«We are considering the possibility of introducing a ban on the supply of tomatoes from Morocco», he announced. Sergei Dankvert recalled that the Rosselkhoznadzor has already banned, on October 30, the import of Moroccan tomatoes re-exported from the Netherlands, Belgium and France due to the discovery of cases affected by the Pepino Mosaic Virus (PepMV), more often called Mosaic or Pepino.
«We are now planning to hold a video conference and inform our Moroccan colleagues that we can ban the supply of their products if they do not start to work more effectively with the tomato viruses», the official said. «The virus infects all crops of tomatoes, peppers and potatoes, so we are constantly working with Morocco», he added.
«We suggest to the representatives of this country to work according to the principle of regionalization, that is to say to provide information on the regions which are free from the virus and those which are not.Until they do that, and if the situation continues to deteriorate, we will be forced to impose a ban».
According to the Center of Industrial Expertise of the Agricultural Bank of Russia, tomatoes account for more than a quarter of the total volume of vegetables imported by Russia in 2020. For the first nine months of the current year, the main countries exporting tomatoes to the Russian Federation are Azerbaijan (38% of Russian imports), followed by Turkey (14%), Morocco (10%), China (9%) and Belarus (7%).
In October, Russia banned the importation of a type of tomato from Morocco, which had yet obtained health certificates from the Netherlands, Belgium and France, due to the discovery of cases of Mosaic or Pepino.
It was during the implementation of health control and quarantine measures for fresh tomatoes from Morocco that ten cases of tomatoes affected by the Pepino Mosaic Virus were discovered.
