Russian Federation marks anniversary of its ban on Western food by launching destruction

“One year on, it is clear that the EU agri-food sector has been remarkably resilient”, officials said.

But others say people should be more patriotic.

Despite tons of products being destroyed, residents were able to salvage some of the food.

The frenzy, remarkable even by the standards of Russia’s recent politicization of food supplies, was gleefully reported by Russian state television. Agriculture minister Alexander Tkachev declined to comment on Wednesday. Under the Russian decree adopted on July 31, banned products must be destroyed in front of witnesses and video-taped.

“It is better to confiscate benign products instead of liquidation, thus punishing those suppliers or customers who violate the government’s decisions, and then to transfer them to schools, orphanages, homes for the disabled”, said Shagaida.

President Putin last week signed a decree ordering the destruction of the food which ranges from gourmet cheese to fruit and vegetables.

Cheeseheads of the world, it’s time to mourn.

The ban came in the aftermath of Western sanctions against Russian Federation for its role in the Ukraine crisis.

Anti-poverty campaigners say the clampdown is a waste.

But it isn’t just starving Russians who have felt the pressure.

Opposition figure and former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov responded with bitter irony.

Turophile tears aside, it’s horrifying to see so much food wasted when nearly 23 million Russians are living beneath the poverty line.

Russian web users posted numerous memes and cartoons on the internet in protest, expressing widespread disgust at the liquidation of the food products. “Some real triumph of humanism”, he said on Twitter.

According to him, even the imperfection of economic institutions and government regulation in the country in this respect is not critical. Customs officials said some meat, for example, will be ground into bone meal.

Two truckloads of European tomatoes and three of nectarines and peaches were smashed with a tractor and bulldozer in the Smolensk region after they arrived with fake documents, the food safety agency Rosselkhoznadzor said.

On September 29, the European Commission adopted a new 165-million-euro program to compensate agricultural producers affected by the Russian food embargo. Now the authorities are also proposing to limit imports of X-ray machines and defibrillators for hospitals, which are already complaining of poor equipment. They were designed to make it cheaper to export crude oil, while raising taxes on fuel oil exporters and miners.

The Russian Orthodox Church did not look kindly upon the destruction of food, either.

Undeterred, one high-ranking government official, Dmitry Chugunov, approved the idea of stiff jail sentences for food smugglers, saying: “If we don’t kick this food addiction, we will never learn to build worthy cheese factories for ourselves”. “The primary goal is to stop the contraband… Third, and in fact the most important thing, is safeguarding the health of citizens”, he told reporters.

Meanwhile, a petition on Change.org has been started challenging the ban.