Anyway, there are two major gainers from the Russian food embargo:
1. Belarus: The Belorussian cartels are making a lot of money, by re-exporting farm products from Russophobe countries such as Moldova, Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia.
2. Russian Agro-Industrial giants: Firms such as Cherkizovo, Rusagro, Miratorg.etc are gaining enormously from high prices. The irony is that most of these firms are controlled by the foreigners.
Topic: Putin Is Losing a Nasty Food Fight - page 2. (Read 1745 times)
Millions are starving in Africa, an even larger number cannot afford to eat as much as they wish, or need, and some mad man is destroying tons of good food. This is the sad world we're living into. I guess Africans should protest in front a Russian embassy.
Putin Is Losing a Nasty Food Fight
Russian President Vladimir Putin has mounted a new campaign in his propaganda war with the West: The highly publicized destruction of imported food, which the government banned last year in retaliation for Western economic sanctions. This time around, though, his constituents aren't quite with him.
The ban, aimed at the U.S. and European countries that imposed sanctions on Russia over its aggression in Ukraine, covers a long of items, including fruit, vegetables, most kinds of meat, fish and dairy products. Some have been replaced by imports from other parts of the world. In other cases, local producers have stepped up. In the first six months of 2015, Russia's poultry output increased 11.4 percent from the same period in 2014, meat production jumped 13.2 percent, and cheese production increased 27.5 percent.
The local replacements often aren't all that great. In a taste test of one of the bizarre cheeses that have filled Russian store shelves since the embargo, the Guardian's Moscow correspondent Shaun Walker concluded that "the disintegrating texture is unnerving, and feels as if hundreds of tiny globules of parmesan have been left out on the pavement for a couple of weeks and then stuck back together with glue."
To satisfy demand for the real thing, embargoed goods have been filtering into Russia. Some arrive by circuitous routes to establish acceptable provenance, or are repackaged in neighboring Belarus to pretend they originated there (I've seen Belorussian salmon in stores, though the landlocked country doesn't produce it). Others are simply smuggled in: Russian customs inspectors are not known for their incorruptibility.
In a rare act of defiance, the Magnit chain of discount supermarkets, one of the country's biggest retailers, sued the government agency charged with keeping embargoed items out of stores, claiming Putin's decree on the food sanctions bans only their import, not their sale. A St. Petersburg court last month ruled in Magnit's favor, a decision that would be more surprising if the company weren't owned by Sergey Galitsky, one of Russia's richest people.
Putin, however, won't have it. He wants his food embargo to work as effectively as before, boosting local producers and punishing Western companies that have already seen their Russian business shrink. European Union exports of food, beverages and tobacco to Russia, for example, were down more than 50 percent in May from a year earlier:
moar - http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-06/putin-gets-in-a-nasty-food-fight
Russian President Vladimir Putin has mounted a new campaign in his propaganda war with the West: The highly publicized destruction of imported food, which the government banned last year in retaliation for Western economic sanctions. This time around, though, his constituents aren't quite with him.
The ban, aimed at the U.S. and European countries that imposed sanctions on Russia over its aggression in Ukraine, covers a long of items, including fruit, vegetables, most kinds of meat, fish and dairy products. Some have been replaced by imports from other parts of the world. In other cases, local producers have stepped up. In the first six months of 2015, Russia's poultry output increased 11.4 percent from the same period in 2014, meat production jumped 13.2 percent, and cheese production increased 27.5 percent.
The local replacements often aren't all that great. In a taste test of one of the bizarre cheeses that have filled Russian store shelves since the embargo, the Guardian's Moscow correspondent Shaun Walker concluded that "the disintegrating texture is unnerving, and feels as if hundreds of tiny globules of parmesan have been left out on the pavement for a couple of weeks and then stuck back together with glue."
To satisfy demand for the real thing, embargoed goods have been filtering into Russia. Some arrive by circuitous routes to establish acceptable provenance, or are repackaged in neighboring Belarus to pretend they originated there (I've seen Belorussian salmon in stores, though the landlocked country doesn't produce it). Others are simply smuggled in: Russian customs inspectors are not known for their incorruptibility.
In a rare act of defiance, the Magnit chain of discount supermarkets, one of the country's biggest retailers, sued the government agency charged with keeping embargoed items out of stores, claiming Putin's decree on the food sanctions bans only their import, not their sale. A St. Petersburg court last month ruled in Magnit's favor, a decision that would be more surprising if the company weren't owned by Sergey Galitsky, one of Russia's richest people.
Putin, however, won't have it. He wants his food embargo to work as effectively as before, boosting local producers and punishing Western companies that have already seen their Russian business shrink. European Union exports of food, beverages and tobacco to Russia, for example, were down more than 50 percent in May from a year earlier:
moar - http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-06/putin-gets-in-a-nasty-food-fight
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