Russia is considering resuming vegetable imports from Denmark and Spain after it banned European vegetable sales this month due to a deadly E. coli outbreak, the consumer watchdog said Thursday.
Russia has already lifted the ban on vegetables from the Netherlands and Belgium.
"In the framework of agreements reached with the European Union, we are assessing the question of allowing the deliveries from two more countries of the European Union," Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Federal Consumer Protection Service, told Interfax.
Russia and the European Union signed a deal last week agreeing on conditions for the resumption of EU fresh vegetable imports to Russia, a trade that earned EU producers some 600 million euros ($850 million) last year.
The European Commission said each EU state exporting fresh vegetables to Russia would have to certify, over a limited period, the origin of the produce and the absence of the E. coli strain responsible for the outbreak in northern Germany.
(Reuters)
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