No complaints about Ukrainian agricultural products quality on global market - food safety watchdog

MOSCOW. April 11 (Interfax) - There are no complaints about the quality of Ukrainian agricultural products on the global market, Ukrainian State Service on Food Safety and Consumer Protection head Sergei Tkachuk said.

"There are no complaints on our products on the global market. I have not seen such threats. We have not received mass notifications from the Polish side during those actions when grain cars were opened, grain of our exporting economic entities was spilled on the ground," Ukrainian media quoted him as saying at a meeting with agrarian associations and grain traders in Kiev on Wednesday.

As far as quality is concerned, the notifications received by Ukraine are "a meager number, if we correlate them with the entire volume of exported products," Tkachuk said. Respectively, the food safety watchdog's experts do not see any threats to Ukrainian agricultural products on the global market.

He affirmed that Ukraine has received advice from its European counterparts to use extra research methods when verifying compliance with the quality of exported products.

"We are working on this. We are developing our network of laboratories, as the issue of the need for widespread PCR study (the method is used to identify plant pathogens, provides the highest sensitivity and accuracy of the result) is raised," he said.

Ukraine promptly responds to all complaints of importing countries and eagerly involved in arbitration proceedings, as it has laboratories accredited in the European Union not only for phytosanitary, but also for veterinary oversight, Tkachuk said.

During international arbitration proceedings, in particular, on the poultry meat quality, the watchdog's laboratories tested all batches from one of the largest poultry meat exporters from Ukraine, he said. Based on the findings of this testing, the export ban was lifted. Similar incidents occur when products with one batch of goods are shipped to two countries: there are no complaints about the quality of goods in one country, but in the other, there are. When conducting arbitration proceedings, the dispute is resolved in favor of the Ukrainian side.

"There are enough such cases of biased attitude to Ukrainian products in importing countries, but Ukraine will definitely protect all domestic producers and exporters," he said.