Exclusion of 19 US companies from the list of chicken meat suppliers will not impact the domestic market of Russia. This statement was made on August 29 by the Head of the RF Ministry for Agriculture Alexey Gordeyev, - the Ministry’s press-center reported.

“Throughout the recent 7 years the growth of chicken meat production in Russia has made up about 15%, - the Minister notes, having reminded that in 2007 Russia produced about 1.9 million tons of chicken meat (dead weight), which exceeds indices of 1990 which was a reference year in terms of agriculture.

According to A. Gordeyev, the volume of chicken meat production will increase in 2008 by more than 300 000 tons as compared to the figures from 2007.

Among the reasons for exclusion of the 19 US companies from the list of chicken meat suppliers to RF A. Gordeyev mentioned repeated cases of detection in the US exported meat of excessive quantities (against the ultimate admissible level) of residual arsenic, salmonella, Escherichia coli and other microorganisms, dangerous for human health. In addition to this, results of a selective inspection, undertaken by experts from Rosselkhoznadzor within July-August of this year, have shown, that certain US companies failed to fulfill pre-slaughter examination requirements and didn’t observe the temperature mode in the technological process, related to chicken meat reprocessing.

"Despite explicit violations of the Russian veterinary legislation in the supplies of chicken meat from the US, we have not received any fact-finding results from the US party so far”, - A. Gordeyev noted.

He also reported, that Rosselkhoznadzor had sent to the USDA a full list of excluded companies, complemented by a list of comments, according to an established procedure.