1. Overview of Russian-Chinese food trade

China and Russia as a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, frequent high-level exchanges, under the impact of the epidemic, the basic plate of China-Russia economic and trade cooperation remains stable as a rock, food trade is developing rapidly, China's Ministry of Commerce in January statistics show that in 2021, China and Russia economic and trade cooperation to achieve leaps and bounds, trade in goods reached $146.87 billion, the first time in history exceeded the $140 billion, with a year-on-year growth of 35.9%. China has steadily ranked as Russia's top trading partner country for 12 years. Although Russia has joined the WTO, its SPS and TBT technical measures and tariff quotas and other barriers in trade have not been completely removed, transparency and openness is poor, how to better grasp the quality and safety of food exports to Russia, what key points should be grasped in the export process, and what are the Russian sampling requirements for imported products? Exporters of food products to Russia must be able to play the game of chess well by having gullies in their chests.

based on the demand and expansion of business in Russia in recent years, Foodmate has compiled a series of keywords related to food exports to Russia, which are now summarised and shared. The key points shared here are food safety standards, labelling requirements and conformity assessment requirements.

2. Compilation of keywords

As a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, Russia is required by the Eurasian Economic Union Treaty to comply with the Union's veterinary sanitary, phytosanitary and product technical regulations for product quality and safety, labelling, packaging safety and import and export safety management. For food exports to Russia, we focus on product quality and safety, labelling, product conformity assessment, sampling of imported products and the functions of regulatory authorities, etc. Some of the keywords involved in these areas are detailed in Table 1.


3. Summary

From the above analysis, it can be concluded that the regulatory system and departmental functions of Russian imported food safety laws and regulations are more systematic and complete, and the product standards and regulations are more comprehensive, but in the actual sampling and notification process, the reasons for product violations are not clearly indicated, which result in a certain trade barrier. In this regard, the Foodmate suggests that enterprises in the food business with Russia should carry out in-depth research and study of the Russian and Eurasian Economic Union regulatory documents and compare them with each other. Moreover, the conformity assessment of export products must be clearly classified and the appropriate assessment method must be adopted to avoid export delays and losses due to improper selection of methods.