Insights Into the Russian Red Meat Market

The Russian market is currently closed to U.S. pork and beef. The U.S. Meat Export Federation Manager Yuri Barutkin who is based in St. Petersburg. While he is focusing his efforts of promoting U.S. red meat to the region surrounding Russia —- he provides insight into the state of Russian pork and beef production and the country's red meat trade.

Barutkin: "The Russian government has emphasized the importance of self-sufficiency in meat. They've given a lot of support to domestic producers — mostly pork and chicken in order to achieve the greater levels of self-sufficiency and in many ways the self-sufficiency has gone to new levels for definitely chicken and porker — lesser for beef. A lot of people are commenting that this has happen not because the production has grown so much but the consumption of meat has actually gone done. The economy is going through troublesome time through the lower oil prices and the economic sanctions that were in imposed. So the Russian economy has actually been contracting over the past few years. That resulted in the disposable income of the Russian population going down and the lower per capita consumption of beef and pork. The self-sufficiency figures are up due to the growth in production but also due to the contraction in consumption."

Many of Russia's traditional red meat suppliers – such as the European Union, the U.S., Canada and Australia – are locked out of the Russian market due to economic counter-sanctions related to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, so only a few major exporting countries remain eligible.