ANGER ERUPTS OVER DESTROYED FOOD
350 tons of banned items from Europe, U.S.
The destruction of
MOSCOW more than 350 tons of food by the government last week angered Russians in a nation where some are struggling to feed themselves and many recall the norm of food shortages just a generation ago.
The food was burned and streamrolled beginning Thursday after a controversial decree by President Vladimir Putin ordering banned products from Europe and the United States to be eliminated before they can reach store shelves.
“You can’t just destroy food when there are so many people who have trouble feeding themselves,” said activist Olga Saveleva, whose Change.org petition has gathered more than 320,000 signatures since Thursday.
“The media is gleefully show- ing how this food is being burned. We have a lot of people going hungry, a lot of people in poverty. There are veterans of (World War II) who remember the blockade” of Leningrad, when hundreds of thousands of people died of hunger, she said. “This is a mockery.”
Moscow banned a range of meat, fruit and milk products from the USA and European countries a year ago in retaliation for Western sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and incursion into eastern Ukraine.
Russia denies it is involved in the ongoing fighting in eastern Ukraine, despite mounting evidence.
Last month, the government proposed destroying banned foodstuffs that were continuing to seep across the border and onto store shelves.
Putin signed a decree, which went into effect Thursday, ordering the destruction of any such products that had made it into the country. The order does not affect food brought in by citizens for private use.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted on Thursday the incineration of food looked “unpleasant.” But he added it was a necessary measure “considering that this is, simply put, contraband,” according to RIA Novosti. He said the Kremlin would consider the petition.
Since the decree went into effect, Russian state television has been demonstrating how cheese, fruit and meat were being incinerated and bulldozed into the ground. The measures are “absurd and grotesque,” Saveleva said.