"The import of European pork will destroy the Ukrainian producer" - the head of the USBA Iryna Palamar

Import of meat to Ukraine in January-March 2018 was the largest in the last 5 years.

This was reported by Ukrinform based on the information of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

"The first three months of this year showed an increase in imports for all positions. Moreover, for all positions, imports for the first quarter this year turned out to be the largest over the last 5 years, for pork - over 4 years," the agricultural market analyst and national consultant FAO Andrii Pankratov said.

The expert noted that the increase in imports was the result of a significant rise in price of domestic meat in the domestic market.

"Such a rapid increase in meat imports is a logical consequence of inaction of our authorities on the situation in livestock, and in particular in pig production," Iryna Palamar, the head of the Ukrainian Stock Breeders Association said. "We have been sounding alarm for a long time already; we have been trying to reach the authorities for more than 2 years, so that at last it began to take at least some steps towards combating ASF, the main reason for the reduction of the pig industry and, correspondingly, the rise in price of domestic pork. Back in 2015, I predicted that soon Ukraine could be left without salo. And, despite today's prices for this beloved national product, indeed, it happened: many Ukrainians can no longer afford it.

On the other hand, the increase in imports will further affect the Ukrainian pork producers, which have already suffered because of the closure of exports, and for which in the end this business may become unprofitable because of the great competition with European pork and the high risks of ASF.

Our program on overcoming ASF ("Program of prevention and control of the spread of the disease ASF in the territory of Ukraine for 2017-2022 years"), which was developed together with representatives of the NAAN, employees of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection, industry experts and business representatives and clearly described effective steps on how to combat the epizootic outbreak, and which we submitted as early as in 2017 for approval to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, was ignored. During the time when the ASF rages in the country, the only changes that were introduced in 2018 in the Concept of the State Program for the Development of the Agroindustrial Complex, where a few words about the ASF were mentioned.

An important step should also be the introduction of compartmentalization (our Association has repeatedly appealed to the authorities about it), which is the only opportunity to establish export for Ukrainian pork today. Unfortunately, the three drafts of the order - "On the implementation of compartmentalization", "On the approval of the Instruction on the content of pigs to prevent the spread of infectious diseases", and "On the Amendments to the Instruction for the Prevention and Control of African Swine Fever", are not coordinated by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy.

Probably, today the authorities are only interested in the carve-up of 4 billion subsidies.

It bears reminding that, according to the State Statistics Service, during 2017 meat and meat products in Ukraine went up by 26.2%.

Another disappointing statistics is also observed with regard to the spread of ASF: as of 6.04.2018, 48 cases of the disease have been fixed. That is, the situation last year has not improved (for the whole of 2017 there were 163 cases of ASF).