European Union food safety experts have tightened rules on Bulgaria and Romania to restrict their milk, meat and animal exports into other EU countries from Jan. 1, the European Commission said on Monday, according to Reuters. The EU executive hopes the move will send a positive signal to Russia in the Commission's bid to resolve a bitter dispute between Brussels and Moscow over meat imports. Russia has threatened to stop all EU imports of meat from Jan. 1 unless it receives assurances over the quality and safety of products after Bulgaria and Romania join the bloc next month. A separate Russian ban on Polish meat products has also heightened tensions between Moscow and Brussels. Last month Warsaw vetoed the launch of talks for a new overarching EU-Russia agreement. Under the new measures, Bulgarian companies that were authorised to export meat and milk products to other EU states after EU accession will now have to wait to do so. "Companies which are already exporting milk and beef are not affected," Philip Tod, spokesman for EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said. "But the 359 meat and 391 milk establishments due to start exporting from January 1 will have to endure further investigations on a case by case basis before being allowed to export to the EU." Currently, 34 Bulgarian companies export milk into the EU, while 24 supply meat. The experts also agreed that establishments in Romania and Bulgaria using products of animal origin imported from non-EU countries may not export those processed goods into EU markets. "This is to ensure that processed goods made from non-compliant animal products are not inadvertently put on the market elsewhere in the EU," the Commission said in a statement. The decision was expected, said Dimitar Peychev, Bulgaria's deputy agriculture minister. "We had an EU mission that ended last week and the experts very clearly highlighted the shortcomings. The problem is mostly with dairies, because we have very few farms that produce quality milk," Peychev said. "As for meat -- we mainly import pork and veal. We do export poultry meat, but we do not have heavy restrictions there," he said. Romania's food safety authority said described the decision as "correct". "If you want to join a club where there are strict rules you need to obey that rules. I can't see why Romania should behave differently," Marian Avram, the head of Romania's food safety authority told Reuters. Avram said around 8,200 tonnes of non-EU meat, coming mostly from Brazil, Canada and the United States is currently deposited in warehouses across the country. Monday's announcement comes a day before a meeting of EU and Russian officials aimed at paving the way for an agreement before the end of the month. "These measures were always going to come into force no matter what the political situation is with Russia, however, we do hope this will show the Russians just how serious we are on food safety," a Commission official told Reuters. The disagreement over food safety standards in the EU's two newest members and the Polish impasse will be discussed at the meeting, officials said. If Tuesday's visit to Brussels by Russia's deputy head of animal and plant health, Yevgeny Nepoklonov, proves positive, then Kyprianou could travel to Moscow to seal a deal on Dec. 18. European lawmakers on the European Parliament's agriculture and food safety committee welcomed the talks. Irish MEP, Liam Aylward said the talks were "an indication that the political temperature may thankfully be lowering". Ireland has exported over 100 million euros worth of food products to Russia this year, over a third of which was beef. Russia is unhappy with the level of controls on animal disease in Bulgaria and Romania, which have had many cases of classical swine fever and bluetongue. The new rules are in addition to measures already imposed by the Commission as part of the conditions for Bulgaria and Romania's membership. Existing restrictions on exports of live pigs and pig meat from Romania and parts of Bulgaria to the EU due to classical swine fever were extended by the EU executive until September 2007. In addition, dozens of sub-standard slaughterhouses and food processing plants in Bulgaria and Romania will be barred from exporting to other EU nations for some time after accession, as was applied to central European new entrants in 2004.
