The State Service of Ukraine on Food Safety and Consumer Protection this year plans to start the accessing procedure for Ukrainian beef on the European Union market. The Head of SSUFSCP Volodymyr Lapa announced about this during the forum "Association Agreement with the EU: Opportunities for small and medium businesses" held on April 11 in Chernihiv.

"We are planning to initiate the output of our beef to the EU market this year. Of course, we must do "our homework", in particular to ensure the monitoring of bovine spongiform encephalopathy", - said Volodymyr Lapa.

The Head of SSUFSCP remarked that experience shows that it is quite a long process: "It may take a few years until our European colleagues will check all the elements of the control system. But this year we are planning to start such a monitoring and thus initiate the accessing procedure for beef on the EU market.

Volodymyr Lapa said that as of today the export to the EU market are providing 278 national enterprises, including 98 - companies that produce food products: dairy products – 15, poultry meat - 6, poultry products – 2, fishery products – 19, egg products - 2, honey – 52, raw intestines for human consumption - 1, collagen casings -1. By the way since SSUFSCP is acting, the approval of export to the EU received 59 new Ukrainian enterprises, 14 of them - food producers (3 - production of poultry meat and products from it, 4 - fishery products, 6 - milk and dairy products, 1 - collagen casings).

In general, as noted by the Head of SSUFSCP, the access of Ukrainian commodities to the European market is quite complicated. For this we need to work hardly both at the legislative level and at the organizational level for potential exporting enterprises. Also, it’s necessary to consider that Europe is a net exporter for most kinds of products.

"Currently, the main sales markets for beef remain countries of North Africa, South and East Asia and the Middle East", - said Volodymyr Lapa.