USDA sets up new guidelines for selling pork to Russia

The US Department of Agriculture has set up new guidelines for US pork producers to export to Russia, a move that industry analysts see as a necessary step in reviving trade between the two countries.

Russia systematically barred exports from all major US pork exporters - mostly due to allegations that residues of prohibited antibiotics were detected in pork shipments - until there were none left eligible to ship to Russia by December 2009.

The new US export verification, or EV, programme - now posted on USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service website - "will be the avenue" that most US. producers will need to take to qualify again to ship to Russia, US Meat Export Federation spokesman Joe Schuele said Friday (Feb 26).

An analysis of the EV programme by the federation listed key new provisions that require exporters to show that their pork is "free of tetracycline group antibiotics" and comes from US slaughterhouses that "implement a tetracycline group antibiotics testing programme."

The requirements also state that pork producers must submit to government testing.

"Each slaughter facility must provide ... four samples per year (on a quarterly basis) for analysis for the presence of Tetracycline Group Residues," according to the USDA document.

A US pork industry official said that USDA's completion of the EV programme is good news and a necessary step to qualifying most US producers for export, but also said there are some details that still need to be worked out between the US and Russian governments. The official asked not to be named because negotiations aren't complete.

Russia imported about US$162 million worth of US pork from January through October in 2009, according to USDA data. That was down about 44% from roughly US$290 million worth of pork in the same time frame in 2008.