Source:  Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE.COM, 8/26/10

Russia’s food safety agency Rosselkhoznadzor will increase monitoring and take other measures to ensure poultry imported from the United States is safe in the wake of a recall of U.S. eggs infected with salmonella, a spokesman for the agency told state-owned Interfax News Agency.  

It is too early to talk about a fresh ban on U.S. chicken exports to Russia, so soon after the problem with poultry meat processed in chlorine solutions was resolved, Rosselkhoznadzor spokesman Alexei Alekseenko told Interfax, adding, "But in any case the monitoring will be stepped up. We will take other measures to ensure safety."

His comments came just two days after Gennady Onishchenko, head of Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian Federal Service for Consumer Rights and Human Welfare Protection, made similar statements reported by state-owned RIA Novosti. 

"We are not ruling out any options that might follow, but we need official information in order to make the best decision," said Alekseenko. He added that Rosselkhoznadzor has asked USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service "to report in a timely fashion which enterprises produced the tainted product and what was the cause of the salmonella infection, and to report on the measures the competent authorities have taken in order to prevent the outbreak from spreading."

Rosselkhoznadzor did not set a deadline for receipt of information from the FSIS. "But dragging it out might cause harm to trade and U.S.companies," Interfax quoted him as saying.

Disconnect
The poultry meat and egg segments of the U.S. poultry industry are completely separate entities, the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council (USAPEEC) explained in a statement to the Russian media after Onishchenko’s comments on Monday.

“The products never come in contact with each other and are produced at separate facilities remotely located from one another, which fully excludes any possibility of cross-contamination,” said the USAPEEC statement.

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