Moscow - Russia's acting Agriculture Minister Viktor Khlystun said that domestic poultry farmers are becoming more efficient but they have a long way to go to catch up with U.S. imports known as "Bush's legs."
Trade sources said the imported chicken products -- given their derogatory nickname in the early 1990s when U.S. President George Bush was promoting U.S.-Russia trade -- will remain a major part of the national diet.
Khlystun, quoted by Itar-Tass news agency, said Russian poultry farmers had a real chance of driving "Bush's legs" off the market. But a Moscow trade source close to both the Russian and U.S. poultry industries dismissed the idea.
Khlystun himself admitted that major obstacles had to be overcome in order to compete with low-cost foreign producers.
"The workers collectives at some poultry factories use three times as much electricity and feed per unit of production," Tass quoted him as saying. "They don't think about reducing production costs."
The trade source said total Russian poultry consumption in 1997 was 1.745 million tonnes. The price was around $1,000 a tonne last year, giving a total market value of around $1.7 billion to $1.75 billion.
Of this, Russian production accounted for just 545,000 tonnes, with total imports standing at 1.2 million tonnes.
The U.S. had two thirds of all imports, with a share of around 800,000 tonnes worth $800 million, making Russia easily the biggest single market for American poultry products. The rest came mainly from Europe and Brazil.
The trade source estimated that the whole Russian meat industry had contracted by 60 percent since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as subsidies had been removed while the sector had not yet been reformed.
"The Russian meat sector operated off huge state subsidies, imports of grain were provided by the government to the meat industry without any concern for costs of production or efficiency," he said.
"Now the livestock industry is trying to compete in a free market economy without any subsidies and without reforming, and that just doesn't work."
He added that many Russian collective farms were still providing kindergartens, schools and other social facilities to employees and their families. But without state subsidies many were being forced out of business.
The issue is a sensitive one in Russia, where worries are often raised over "food security" and there is concern about over-dependence on imports.
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