Russian food crematoria provokes outrage

The Russian government plans for mass destruction of banned Western food imports have provoked outrage in a country where poverty rates are soaring and memories remain of famine during Soviet times. Russian TV showed a small mountain of illegally imported European cheese being bulldozed on Thursday while even before the official start, zealous workers threw boxes of European bacon into an incinerator.

Moscow banned many Western food imports last year in retaliation for sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and other of their allies during the confrontation over Ukraine. But now many Russians say the government has lost sight of the everyday struggles faced by ordinary citizens.

Over 2.67 lakh people have backed an online petition on Change.org, an international website that hosts campaigns, calling on President Vladimir Putin to revoke the decision and hand the food to people in need. "Sanctions have led to a major growth in food prices on Russian shelves.

Russian pensioners, veterans, large families, the disabled and other needy social groups were forced to greatly restrict their diets, right up to starvation," it says. "If you can just eat these products, why destroy it?"

With annual food price inflation running at over 20 per cent, public indignation has been deepened by Russian media reports that the agriculture ministry was tendering to buy "mobile food crematoria" to speed up the destruction. Agriculture minister Alexander Tkachevdeclined to comment on Wednesday.

Putin's decree ordering the food to be destroyed entered into force on Thursday. How much food has evaded the embargo is unclear, but considerable quantities appear to have slipped through the net by various routes, including via Belarus. The ban, currently in place until August 5, 2016, covers a wide range of imports including pork, beef, poultry, fish and seafood, milk and dairy products, fruits, vegetables and nuts.

It applies to food from the United States, EU, Canada, Australia and Norway. After the fall of Communism, Russians developed a strong appetite in the 1990s for Western food imports from cheap U.S. chicken quarters to fine French cheeses for the newly wealthy.

Now the soaring food prices are hurting the poor at a time when the economy is in crisis due to the effects of the sanctions and a steep fall in the price of oil, Russia's main export. The rouble lost over 40 percent of its value against the dollar and overall inflation is above 15 percent.

The Rosstat statistics agency says the number of Russians living below the poverty line - defined as those earning less than 10,400 roubles a month - has jumped. In the first quarter this year, the total hit 23 million, or 16 percent of the population, up from more than 16 million people, or 11 percent of Russians last year.

Opposition figure and former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov responded with bitter irony. "20 million Russian citizens are below poverty line. Their president ordered food products destruction from Aug.6. Some real triumph of humanism," Kasyanov said.

"To destroy food with this standard of living is a crime against one's own nation!" wrote a backer of the petition who gave her name on the website as Natalya Afanasieva. "Come to your senses, Mr. President, finally take at least some pity on your people!"

By Gabriela Baczynska