State health officials deny that Ukraine has any problems with mad cow and foot-and-mouth disease, which are currently wreaking havoc in Western Europe's livestock industry
als deny that Ukraine has any problems with mad cow and foot-and-mouth disease, which are currently wreaking havoc in Western Europe’s livestock industry.
But officials admit that large quantities of meat is entering the country illegally, raising fears that meat from infected animals could sneak into the country despite tight controls.
According to Oleksy Voznyuk, a spokesman for Ukraine’s State Tax Administration, officers detained two trucks transporting meat of “questionable origin” in Zhytomyr oblast on March 21. Voznyuk said officers opened fire on the trucks after drivers ignored orders to stop. The drivers fled into the forest but were later captured.
Voznyuk said the trucks contained 70 tons of chicken legs and beef that lacked quality or origin certificates. Voznyuk said he didn’t know whether the cargo was infected or not, as a veterinary inspection had not yet been performed.
Two weeks earlier, police detained a shipment of tainted beef in Zhytomyr oblast. Voznyuk said the driver of a truck loaded with 35 tons of beef had no paperwork for his cargo. Laboratory tests established that the beef was unfit for consumption.
All the trucks had been headed for Kyiv when stopped, Voznyuk said.
How the meat got past Ukrainian border guards is anyone’s guess.
Voznyuk said it may have entered the country via Moldova. It may also have been declared as transit cargo, he said.
While the country’s western border is well guarded, borders with Russia and other former Soviet states are more porous, peppered with secondary roads and paths that are not protected by border checkpoints.
The incidents have occurred despite what the government describes as unprecedented efforts to block the introduction of the livestock diseases plaguing Western Europe.
In February, the Cabinet adopted a program aimed at preventing the spread of infectious diseases. It includes controls on imported cattle and requires close monitoring of animals.
Then on March 12, Ukraine’s veterinary inspection service widened an existing ban to include importation of meat and meat products from 13 European countries, Canada, Oman and the Falkland Islands. The ban includes live cattle, sheep, milk products, meat and bone flour and bovine sperm, as well as medicine and perfume that contain animal protein, according to Oleksandr Kucheryavenko, deputy head of the veterinary inspection service.
Kucheryavenko said that similar bans imposed last year resulted in a drastic reduction in the amount of legally imported meat. State statistics show that only $759,000 worth of meat and meat products was imported to Ukraine in January, compared with $4.43 million worth of meat brought into the country during January 1999.
With legal imports waning, however, meat smuggling appears to be on the rise.
According to government data, meat valued at Hr 1.6 million has been seized since the beginning of this year. Last year, Hr 3.6 million in contraband meat products was confiscated.
A customs service official who asked that his name be withheld said that illicit meat could be entering Ukraine through the country’s borders with Moldova, Belarus and Russia. He said there are as many as 1,000 unguarded roads on Ukraine’s border with Russia alone.
“There is a high likelihood of anything infiltrating Ukraine through these countries,” he said.
State Customs Service spokesman Pavel Takovoy admitted his agency is struggling to control Ukraine’s borders with other former Soviet republics, saying that the customs service has neither the equipment nor staff to monitor the vast frontiers with these countries. But he said that the Service has recently stepped up its efforts to uncover smuggling schemes and to halt the flow of contraband from former Soviet states.
Kucheryavenko said meat brought into the country illegally can’t be sold in a mainstream market.
“You can bring it into the country, but there is no way you can sell it at a market,” he said.
Meat sold in markets is subjected to triple controls before landing on the butcher’s counter, Kucheryavenko said. Animals are checked before being slaughtered. After slaughter the meat is certified by a regional veterinary doctor. Without a certificate, meat would not be accepted for a third examination, which takes place at the market itself, he said.
According to Kucheryavenko, the only way for infected meat to end up on a consumer’s table would be through an uncontrolled street vendor.
Iryna Lesyk, meat manager for Billa, said the specter of bad meat doesn’t haunt her company’s three supermarkets in Kyiv. Lesyk said Billa sells only inspected, domestically produced meat. She said Billa employs a vet to control documentation and meat quality.
Kucheryavenko said that foot-and-mouth disease in Ukraine was last registered in 1988, and that mad cow disease, is a purely foreign phenomenon. He said that, in principle, mad cow disease can’t occur here as domestically grown cows are purely vegetarian. Use of bone flour feed additives, which cause BSE, was banned in Ukraine in 1998.
