New York Times (January 20, 2010)

Russia Seeks to Cleanse Its Palate of U.S. Chicken

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

MOSCOW — At the mere mention of American chicken at a central Moscow market, the poultry vendors pounce.

“We don’t eat American chicken,” snarled one.

“Americans raise their chickens on chemicals,” another called from across stacks of Russian birds. “They’re all fat. There’s no taste.”

Of all the disputes great and petty that have marred relations between Russia and the United States over the years, chicken has provoked more than its share of angst and animosity. The United States under the first Bush administration flooded Russia with American chicken as food aid in the early 1990s, products that Russians came to call “Bush legs.”

These stocks — mostly thighs and other parts, not many drumsticks — helped feed hungry Russians reeling from an economic collapse. They also came to symbolize the humiliation of a once-great nation reduced to dependence on food handouts.

The Russian government has spent over a decade seeking to do away with this lingering vestige of post-Soviet misery. In the latest attempt, the government imposed an open-ended ban on American chicken imports that started Tuesday, ostensibly because United States companies had failed to adhere to new food safety regulations.

Representatives from both countries began talks on Tuesday in Moscow in an attempt to resolve the dispute, though neither side seemed prepared to make concessions.

The move might cause poultry prices here to spike, but there was nevertheless a tinge of national pride last week when Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin told Russian poultry producers that Russia was no longer dependent on Bush legs.

“Unfortunately, among many of our partners — and above all I mean companies from the United States — we still do not see a readiness to observe our standards,” he said. “If some of our foreign suppliers do not want or are not in a position to fulfill our safety requirements, then we will use other sources.”

This has no doubt unnerved American producers, who gained a foothold in the Russian market in the early 1990s, in part, their Russian critics say, by swamping Russian producers with cheap chicken. Since then, Russian officials have angered American producers and officials with a raft of restrictions and quotas meant to help domestic producers.

The Kremlin has also used chicken as a diplomatic weapon with the United States, which, aside from poultry, has relatively little trade with Russia. Moscow imposed a similar ban in 2002, after the United States raised steel tariffs, and it banned several American chicken companies shortly after Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008, after accusing the United States of helping to instigate the violence.

The continuing chicken dispute has hindered Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

But domestically, the restrictions, coupled with heavy government support of the poultry industry, appear to have worked.

“There has been a rapid rise in production consisting of 15 to 16 percent per year,” said Andrei N. Teriokhin, head of the Association of Russian Poultry Market Operators. Domestic production now accounts for 75 percent of demand.

“In the next four to five years,” Mr. Teriokhin said, “Russia will be able to support itself.”

At Dorogomilovsky Market in Moscow, the chickens arranged lovingly at the poultry counter all come from farms just outside the capital, the vendors said.

“This bird was running around yesterday,” said a burly vendor named Mikhail, pointing out a chicken that was clearly freshly plucked. “They showed us on television where those Bush legs come from,” he said. “They are all American military surplus.”

Propaganda campaigns aside, United States companies were still able to sell about 600,000 tons of chicken last year worth roughly $800 million, according to American and Russian officials, by far the largest share of Russian poultry imports.

But the new regulations, which came into effect on Jan. 1, could endanger this lucrative trade.

At issue is the chlorine bath that American companies use to disinfect chickens after slaughter. Russian health officials declared that method unsafe, and they outlawed the procedure in 2008. The European Union has long enforced a similar ban on the procedure.

The Russian government gave companies, both Russian and foreign, until this year to adopt new procedures. About 90 percent of Russian companies complied, officials said.

The Americans, however, protested. The requirements would force American poultry producers to completely overhaul their sanitation systems, officials and producers have said.

Moreover, American producers have said that the Russian government has provided no scientific evidence that chorine disinfection is unsafe. The USA Poultry and Egg Export Council wrote a letter to the Russian government last November, citing several scientific studies that found the opposite to be true.

But the science of the matter, it seems, is not the most important point. Rather, as Gennady Onishchenko, Russia’s chief sanitary officer, noted in an interview in the official newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta last month, the issue is one of principle.

“A problem has arisen with one country: the United States, which is again continuing to insist that we show them that it is harmful,” Mr. Onishchenko said. “We tell them, ‘Excuse me, we pay the money, so we set the conditions for what kind of meat we want and what kind we don’t.’ ”