Ban on Norway fish has nothing to do with politics - minister

RUSSIA - The Russian minister for agriculture said on Thursday that a ban on imports of cooled fish from Norway starting from January 1, 2006 had nothing to do with politics.

“Starting from January 1, 2006, we impose a ban on imports of cooled fish from Norway and introduce special authorizations for Norwegian enterprises supplying such fish,” Alexei Gordeyev said. “This has nothing to do with politics, but only concerns the health of our citizens,” the minister stressed.

According to the Rosselkhoznadzor agricultural watchdog, the imported Norwegian fish has a dangerous content of heavy metals.

An analysis of samples of fish imported from Norway showed that the content of lead exceeded the permissible limit by 18 times, and that of cadmium - by 3.7 times.

The minister noted that after the introduction of a ban on imports of products from three Norwegian fish farms, which produce salmon fishes, codfish and halibut, Russia informed the Norwegian side and asked them to produce data on checks in Norway.

According to that data last year Norway took only 12 samples. There are 727 enterprises in the country which yearly produce 560,000 tons of fish. Thus, it means that “one test per 50,000 tons of fish is made a year, while the enterprises are checked once in 70 years.”

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Source: ITAR-TASS

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