Onishchenko is not sure of safety of agricultural products coming from Holland
MOSCOW. May 14 (Interfax) - Russia's Rospotrebnadzor Director Gennady Onishchenko said Russia has reasons to be concerned about the safety of agricultural products coming from the Netherlands.
The Netherlands is one of the main foreign suppliers of vegetables to Russia.
Onishchenko told Interfax on Monday he is concerned that the European Union has still not determined the cause of the intestinal infection over which Russia restricted vegetable imports from the EU in summer 2011. He also said studies of bird flu mutations, which are banned by an international convention, have been conducted in the Netherlands.
"We reserve the right to be cautious about all agricultural products supplied from this country. We don't know what they may bring," Onishchenko said.
"Europe has admitted its full inability to determine the cause of these outbreaks. It is still unclear where this infection came from and where it went," Onishchenko said, referring to the outbreak of intestinal infection in summer 2011.
A report by the German Koch Institute was presented at an international forum in Amsterdam on May 6-9, which failed to answer the question about the cause of the outbreak of intestinal infection in Europe, he said.
Onishchenko said the authors of the report have given up an earlier theory that the outbreak of intestinal infection could have been caused by agricultural products coming from Egypt.
"This confirms that the flaws of the entire European epidemiological monitoring and epidemiological investigation system. We are left with false confidence that European countries will be as unprepared as they were in early summer 2011 if this outbreak occurs again. Urgent measures need to be taken to create national and international epidemiological investigation mechanisms. Russia's offers on this matter still stand," Onishchenko said.
Onishchenko said the Netherlands has refused to invite a Russian expert for the presentation of the report on the studies of the bird flu strain.
"The studies looked at the genetic changes in that strain and were aimed at making it more toxic. These studies were nothing else than activities banned by a convention adopted in 1971. That work was done under the aegis of the U.S. Our request to allow our expert to participate in the discussion of the outcome of this study was rudely declined," Onishchenko said.
The Russian sanitary authorities banned the supply to Russia of fresh vegetables from the Netherlands and some other European countries last summer following an outbreak of an acute intestinal infection in the EU.