On July 7th, the Eurasian Economic Union Industrialist Council recently sent a letter to Miasnikovic, the chairman of the Eurasian Economic Commission Executive Committee, to request to study the proposal on the mandatory label management of dairy products proposed by Russia at the meeting and exclude the possibility of unilateral implementation of mandatory label management by individual member states of the Union.

The Industrialist Council pointed out that the manufacturers in the member countries of the Union believe that the implementation of the mandatory label management of dairy products is not reasonable. Dairy products are perishable food and cannot be forged. To ensure food safety and traceability, the Union has introduced quarantine certificates and electronic invoices. Dairy products are important people's livelihood commodities, and the demand is large. Under the current COVID-19 epidemic conditions, it is difficult for the public to accept the price increase of dairy products due to the implementation of label management.

According to data from the Russian Dairy Producers Union, the implementation of mandatory label management requires that Russian dairy producers pay a one-time payment of not less than 26 billion rubles, and the annual operating cost is as high as 35 billion rubles. According to Kazakhstan Dairy Alliance data, the operating cost of introducing dairy product label management in Kazakhstan is about 4.3 billion tenge per year. Belarusian companies estimate that the implementation of label management will increase the price of dairy products by 9%.

The “Eurasian Economic Union’s Commodity Labeling Agreement” was signed in February 2018 and entered into force on March 29, 2019. The "Agreement" stipulates that label management should be preferentially applied to commodities that are expensive and prone to illegal transactions, allowing member countries to implement unilateral label management for certain commodities. However, in practice, in order to avoid the interruption of trade with the country that initiated label management and protect the domestic market from shocks, other member states of the Union will be forced to implement similar label management in their own countries.

Russia has implemented mandatory label management for dairy products since July 2019, and the trial period is until December 31, 2020.