Gordeev: since July 1 EVC will be applied only to agricultural raw materials

"The approach to electronic certification is as follows: everything that was in paper circulation should be transferred to electronic circulation. These are types of products controlled by veterinarians, as a rule, they are raw materials. These are the products that will switch to electronic veterinary certificates. Easy and clear way", he said.

In addition, the Deputy Prime Minister noted that the government decided to introduce a period of adaptation of manufacturers to the new system. "This is due to the fact that, firstly, the Internet does not work everywhere, and secondly, we have a lot of small business representatives, individual entrepreneurs, who are both technically and grammatically - in terms of computer competence - not all of them are ready for innovations. This must be overcome", he said.

As A. Gordeev stressed,"in order not to stop the process of circulation of this important, socially significant product and prevent failures, a completely reasonable, objective decision was made - to provide an adaptation period". Currently, the State Duma is working on amendments to the relevant law.

"Since July 1 this year, the system begins to work, but a year, for example, is given for the adaptation period," he said.

It is assumed that during this period, manufacturers will not be sanctioned for errors in the design of electronic veterinary certificates.

A. Gordeev did not predict the timing of the introduction of electronic veterinary certificates for finished products. "The purpose of the veterinary certificate is not to take over the function of control over the entire circulation of food. There are other ways and mechanisms for this. Which ones? Life is going on; new technologies are being used more and more often. Labelling, barcodes. We will soon come to the fact that all economic activities will be digitized", he said.

As it was reported, electronic veterinary certification of livestock products is envisaged by changes to the law "On veterinary medicine", which was signed by the President of the Russian Federation on July 14, 2015. Until January 1, 2018, there was a transition period during which it was possible to certify products both on paper and in electronic form. Since January 1, 2018, it was planned to make an obligatory transition to entire electronic certification, including finished products. However, representatives of the processing industry, especially the dairy industry, were against it. The deadline for the introduction of electronic veterinary certification was postponed to July 1, 2018.

After that, the discussion began on the possible exclusion of finished products from the system. The expert community did not exclude that the introduction of veterinary certification of finished products could lead to interruptions in the supply to trade and to an increase in prices.

The Ministry of agriculture has prepared a number of draft orders that exclude certain types of products from the electronic veterinary certification system. In particular, these are finished dairy products in consumer packaging (pasteurized (ultra-pasteurized, sterilized) milk or pasteurized (ultra-pasteurized, sterilized) dairy products manufactured industrially and packed in consumer containers), as well as composite products that contain less than 50% (by weight) of animal products, subjected (during the manufacture or at the stage of production of raw materials for it) to warming up in a wet state at a temperature of more than 78 degrees for at least 30 minutes in the thickness of the product. The exceptions are also regarding some other products.

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