The U.S. and Russia are not major trading partners, but chicken is a clear exception, with over $800 million worth of U.S. poultry sold in Russia last year. U.S. chicken exports began under the first Bush administration as food aid, but as Russia's economy has grown and its consumers have become richer and more sophisticated, they are starting to fight back against the prevalence of cheap American chicken.
The Russians have now instituted a ban on U.S. chicken based on sanitary standards, claiming that U.S. chicken, which is cleaned in a chlorine bath during slaughter, is unsafe for human consumption. The E.U. has similar rules on place about chlorine baths. The rules, along with an unofficial PR campaign that U.S. chicken is a reminder of times when Russians had to rely on foreign aid to feed its citizens, threatens to put a serious dent in U.S. chicken exports to Russia.
So is this about unsafe chicken? I think not. The article below hints at what's really going on here -- the domestic Russian chicken industry is growing rapidly and currently satisfies 75% of domestic demand, with projections of meeting 100% of domestic demand in 5 years. If you take out the largest importer (U.S.), and send prices of chicken up a bit thus incentivizing even more chicken farms to open, my guess is that local producers will be able to meet all demand much sooner.
Relying on "sanitary" reasons to ban foodstuffs to protect local producers? I wonder where the Russians learned this lesson.
Russia Seeks to Cleanse its Palate -- NY Times
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