Strong decline in breaches in Russian residue standards

The percentage of breaches of Russian marketing standards for residue (MRL's) has declined drastically in a short period of time. The cause is a harmonisation of Russia's MRL's and those of the European Union (EU). The Dutch horticulture sector and government have successfully strengthened themselves to level the Russian trading barriers based in residue to the ground.

Since Russia started checking for residue of pesticides, nitrate and nitrite on fruit and vegetables, it became clear that the Russian MRL-legislation was a whole lot different from that of the EU. The Russian standards were a lot stricter and the residues of a few products that were allowed in the EU weren't allowed to be there. Sanctions in the form of required safety certificates and threatening import bans for products from Holland were the consequence.
 
To get a good insight into the problems Food Compass was founded in 2009 with a residue monitoring programme mainly focused on Russia. Based on this, the Productschap Tuinbouw supplied a list with products and substances the Russian put the worst import bans on. These were taken to the conversations between the European Commission and the Russian government as a priority.

The efforts of the Dutch companies and the Dutch Government helped form more consecutive MRL standards between Russia and the EU. In 2010 Russia introduced new MRL's for a large amount of substances. The Russian standards for nitrate in vegetables is the most important issue that remains.

In 2009 35 percent didn't meet the Russian standard, since the new harmonised MRL's were initiated on the 25th of September 2010 this has been reduced to 8 percent.