As has been announced, the Russian Agency for Consumer Rights Supervision (Rospotrebnadzor, or RPN) has for the first time refused to give clearance to the Finnish branch of the foodstuffs giant “Nestle” on the supplies of infant food to this country.
In an interview to news agency RIA Novosti Chief Russian Sanitary Inspector Gennadi Onishchenko said that there was no explanation to the fact that this watchdog had to return the registration documents to allow supply of baby food to Russia, other than the negligent technological discipline in the process of production of stuff for exports to Russia.
Without specifying the range of the barred Nestle products our sanitary watchdog states it is dissatisfied with the quality of the stuff exported to Russia. It may be significantly inferior to that of Nestles’ exports to Europe, says Irina Kanunnikova, an expert of the Russian Agency for the studies of the retail market.
“The company gets its ingredients from a number of suppliers, so their mix may be different. At the same time the current trend of lowering production costs and easing standards for the suppliers along with stable strict control over product quality in Europe and other developed countries, which the Russian market cannot boast of, produce the situation we have to face,” said Irina Kanunnikova.
Infant food is currently under strict control, too, with plans to include it in a package of socially valuable products. In its history Nestle had several scandals over infant food. Like those in 1970’s when the company was aggressively winning the developing markets. One of the scandals disclosed that its staffers wore the robes of nurses, and having no detailed instructions, mothers would use poor quality water for cooking baby food. There even were lethal cases.
Maksim Kalyagin, an analyst of the holding FinAm comments: “We all remember the loud scandal quite recently when poisonous melanin was discovered in dry milk China produced. Child’s food is included in the high risk group, so it attracts special attention.”
Experts believe that the barring of the Finnish product will not cause shortages of infant food as many of its types are already produced in Russia. As for Nestle, it increased its sales in Russia by 12% year-on-year to 57 billion roubles. It owns in Russia 14 plants manufacturing a wide range of foodstuffs, including Nescafe, Nesquick controlling 40% of the Russian coffee market, chocolates Nuts, the ices.
But we only want its quality products, as the recent developments show.
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