Russia is ready to import poultry from India if the US does not resume its supplies, according to Russian Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik. 

India, a major poultry producer, has already expressed its readiness to supply its products to Russia, as well as Turkey and Thailand, Skrynnik said. "At the moment, we found out that we have excessive stocks of poultry products on our farms, so we stopped discussions by now. But, theoretically, if we need poultry, we can buy it from India," she said after a meeting with her Indian counterpart Sharad Pawar.

Pawar was in Moscow to attend the meeting of agriculture ministers of BRIC nations - Brazil, Russia, India and China - which was held Friday (Mar 26). The US, which supplied 22% of poultry consumed in Russia last year, was unable to continue imports after January 1, when new sanitary requirements came into force in Russia.

Earlier, Russia's chief sanitary official Gennady Onishchenko said that a draft agreement on US poultry supplies to Russia was almost ready, but it did not mean that the supplies would definitely resume in the near future.