The Federation Council discussed the rules for labeling dairy products by means of identification

Alexey Kondratenko stressed that the issue of labeling dairy products is under special control of the Chairman of the Federation Council. ‘The issue is extremely sensitive for dairy industry enterprises and we need to prevent failures in their production process. This issue is important both for Krasnodar region and for all regions of Russia,’ the senator said.

The official drew attention to the fact that this issue has already been considered at a meeting of the profile Committee with the participation of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, Rosselkhoznadzor, professional and industry unions. ‘Following the meeting, it was decided that a number of meetings should be held in the regions in order to clarify the rules for labeling dairy products with identification tools to eliminate problems with its implementation this year. The first such meeting was held in Krasnodar region in February this year and today we continue this work,’ the senator informed.

He reminded that at the end of December last year, the experiment on labeling of finished dairy products was completed and all regulatory legal acts have now been adopted to ensure the phased introduction of its mandatory labeling.

‘However, there are still issues that need to be resolved. For example, it is important to resolve the issue of providing the necessary measures of state support to dairy industry enterprises by introducing subsidies to compensate costs when introducing mandatory labeling of dairy products by means of identification,’ the official stressed.

According to him, this issue was considered as part of the "government hour" at the 502nd meeting of the Federation Council in March this year on the topic "On the implementation of the State Program for the Development of agriculture and regulation of agricultural products, raw materials and food markets." Following its results, relevant recommendations were made to the Government and federal executive authorities, and work is underway to implement them.

‘To date, we need to take all necessary measures to implement the next stage of the introduction of labeling since December 1, 2021, which will oblige to apply electronic identification means to dairy products with a shelf life of 40 days or less, as well as to record the disposal of labeled products through cash registers.’

According to Alexey Kondratenko, this stage of labeling implementation will lead to the involvement of medium and small enterprises of the dairy industry in the process, which have mostly not applied electronic identification tools to their products before. ‘This will require increased attention to these business patterns, as it is much more difficult for them to take into account the technological processes of the new system,’ he added.

The senator expressed hope that today's discussion will help to develop solutions to ensure the introduction of labeling of dairy products on the most comfortable conditions for its producers and to prevent damage to them. ‘Special attention should be paid to small business patterns,’ he stressed.