The Ministry of Economical Development purposes to impose the licensing of meat import.

The Ministry of Economical Development and Trade of Ukraine applied to the Cabinet Council with the offer to include lard and pork into the list of products, the import of which should be subject to licensing in 2011. The corresponding resolution was placed at the web-site of the Ministry of Economical Development and Trade of Ukraine for discussion.

Particularly, the list of products is proposed to be supplemented with the following items: fresh pork, chilled or frozen pork; lard without lean parts, pig’s fat and poultry fat –without rendering or squeezing out in another way, fresh or chilled, salted or in brine, dried or smoked.

At the same time , according to the document, it is proposed to narrow down the list of products, the import or export of which should be licensed by the way of excluding the printing inks and plain paper with water signs from this list.

In Explanatory note it is indicated that according to the information from the Ministry of Agricultural Policy and Food of Ukraine in 2010the continuation of it was observed the break of average cost for one ton of imported meat production: frozen pork, by-products made of cattle meat and the meat of other animals, lard and animal fat with the exception of frozen beef, poultry meat products, where the cost was increased 1,6 and 1,4 times correspondently.

So, in 2010 the most volume of the pork and pork meat products were imported – 148,4 thousands tons(45,1 thousands tons of fresh fork, 102 thousands tons of frozen fork; 31 thousands tons of lard without lean parts; pig’s and poultry fat -38,7 thousands tons. 11,8 thousands tons of by-products made of cattle meat and by –products made of other animals meat – 36,6 thousands tons.

Meanwhile for the period of 11 months of the year 2010, 3,4 thousands tons of beef was imported, that makes 1% of the total amount of imported meat products.

In addition, the tendency of import of the low-grade products to Ukraine is continued. According to the live data of State Committee of Veterinary Medicine of Ukraine, low-grade meat and meat products were mainly imported to Ukraine and namely: beef, consisting of trimming and by-products; pork consisting of by-products, lard and fat; poultry meat, consisting of mechanically boned meat, carcasses and by-products.

According to the information of Ministry of Agricultural Policy and Food of Ukraine, the situation is also complicated by the fact, that the producers from countries of European Union, having considerable preferences and namely subsidized production and export subsidies, are exporting meat production to Ukraine with prices, which are much lower than the prices at Ukrainian market. Such import of meat production can be the factor of destabilization in the development of domestic animal husbandry and this factor can entail the displacement of animal production of commodity producer from the market, that, in its turn, threatens to the safe food production in our state.

So, the Ministry of Agricultural Policy and Food of Ukraine considers that in order to protect the domestic markets, it is necessary to impose the licensing of import of some products from the group 02 by agreement with the Ministry of Agricultural Policy and Food of Ukraine"; as indicated in explanatory note.