MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russia's Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor) lifted restrictions on tea supplies from Sri Lanka, the agency's head Sergey Dankvert said on Monday.
4 October 2017, 17:02 GMT
On December 18, Rosselkhoznadzor imposed a ban on all the plant products from Sri Lanka, because a Khapra beetle, a dangerous pest of grains and seeds, was discovered in a tea shipment. The watchdog noted that if the pest had been brought to the territory of Russia, the damage would have been estimated at dozens of millions of US dollars.
"Following the negotiations, we made a decision to lift the temporary restrictions on all the plant products from Sri Lanka from December 30, 2017 upon the guarantees of the Sri Lankan quarantine service," Dankvert told reporters.
Dankvert noted that the Russian agricultural watchdog would enhance control over all the shipments of plant products from the South Asian country.
