Just over two weeks after the EU-Russia summit took place in Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow and Brussels signed a deal on lifting a vegetable import ban. President Dmitry Medvedev and the EU officials who took part in the summit agreed to lift the ban during the summit, but certain steps should have been done before a new measure is implemented.
Every year Russia imports around 1.1 million tons of vegetables from the European Union, RIA Novosti reported. The trade is worth 600 million euros annually, according to the European Commission.
Russia is the largest vegetable market for the EU – 20 per cent of all imports to Russia are vegetables.
Russia imposed a blanket ban on EU vegetables on June 2, after thousands of people were diagnosed with an E.coli strain that has killed 40 people.
Head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights, Gennady Onishchenko, said on Tuesday that the import ban would not be lifted until the E.coli outbreak stops and there are no more cases registered in Europe, RIA Novosti reported him as saying.
"Countries will need to fill in the certificate, and only after that our customs authorities will decide on the admission or non-admission of these products," said Onishchenko.
European Commissioner for Health John Dalli and director general of the EU Commission’s Directorate for Health and Consumer Protection Paola Koji flew into Moscow to meet with Russian health and consumer authorities for talks.
“We just had our commissioner in town, we are hoping that this can implemented as soon as possible,” Kevin Tait, political adviser to the EU Delegation in Moscow, told The Moscow News. “This agreement allows us to import fresh vegetables into Russia – it’s up to European Union Standards Association or European Commission to certify that the fresh vegetables are healthy.”
Tait said the EU will now be issuing certificates with each shipment of fresh vegetables to Russia.
France records first E. coli death From: AAP .. July 03, 2011 5:28AM
Terrible toll: An spice dealer displays fenugreek seeds at his Cairo shop. A French woman has become the latest victim of E. coli related to Egyptian seeds. Picture: Nasser Nasser AP
FRANCE has recorded its first death from the E. coli outbreak after an elderly woman died on Saturday.
The woman, 78, died after she had been hospitalised in Bordeaux in southwest France since June 24 with hemolytic uremic syndrome - the rare kidney condition affecting a small number of people infected with E. coli.
Dr Benoit Vendrely at Bordeaux Hospital said the strain of E.coli the woman was infected with was not the one implicated in the deaths of 48 people in Germany and one each in the United States and Sweden. He didn't identify the source of the French woman's E. coli contamination.
Seven other patients remain in stable condition at the same French hospital, six of whom have been confirmed to have the same strain of E.coli as in the outbreak that originated in Germany.
European health experts said that contaminated Egyptian fenugreek seeds were likely the source of that deadly outbreak.
German authorities on Friday reported another death in the E. coli outbreak - bringing the total to 50.
The national disease control centre said 48 deaths have been reported in Germany, up from 47 a day earlier. One death in Sweden and another in the US are linked to the outbreak, according to the World Health Organization.
A total of 3,999 people have now been reported to be ill in Germany from the outbreak, including 845 with a complication that can lead to kidney failure.
Another 122 cases have been reported in 16 other countries.
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