Russia, the top market for U.S. chicken, will lift a ban on U.S. poultry imports starting Aug. 16, the Interfax news agency quoted Russian Agriculture Ministry spokesperson Oleg Aksyonov as saying on Friday.
Russia, where U.S. poultry has been banned since January, will allow poultry imports from 68 U.S. plants out of a total of 87 proposed by the U.S. side, Aksyonov said.
But after meeting with Russian counterparts in Geneva to try to restart trade, halted since January, a U.S. government team said Russia's proposal was not an acceptable way to implement a deal signed on June 24 by President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev.
"We will continue to press Russia to fully implement this agreement," a statement from the U.S. government team said.
Moscow said the approved plants meet the production and processing conditions set by Russia's animal and plant health watchdog RosSelkhozNadzor.
But the U.S. team said the list includes only eight of 27 poultry slaughter and processing plants that the U.S. Agriculture Department has determined should be eligible to ship to Russia.
"The remaining 60 plants that Russia is listing are cold storage facilities that can only handle poultry if there is poultry to handle," the U.S. statement said.
U.S. shippers had begun loading up exports, confident that the June deal would hold, when Russia's animal and plant health watchdog said it wanted to inspect plants, frustrating top U.S. officials who said that wasn't part of the agreement.
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