FAS asked the largest producers of poultry meat due to rising prices

The fact that the FAS decided to check the validity of the prices of large market participants, RBC sources reported a week ago. The department said that two poultry producers were issued orders

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) sent inquiries to the three largest poultry MEAT producers to verify the validity of their wholesale selling prices, as well as to animal feed manufacturers and representatives of industry associations to verify the validity of pricing for feed and veterinary drugs, RBC was told in the press service of the department.

“Two producers of poultry meat were issued prescriptions based on the results of transactions in the market. After analyzing the requested information, the FAS RUSSIA will be able to draw conclusions about the existence of grounds for taking response measures.

The FAS emphasized that the service is actively working with both food and non-food federal and regional retailers in order to join the voluntary initiative to limit markups or freeze prices for certain categories of goods. “Thanks to this work, Detsky Mir previously limited markups on the 40 most popular children’s products at a level of no more than 20% for the whole of 2023,” the department noted.

In addition, the FAS instructed the territorial authorities to collect information on raw MILK processors in the regions for further identification of dominant entities by the service.

Earlier, two participants in the meeting of the Ministry of Agriculture on August 10 reported to RBC that the FAS would begin checking the validity of the increase in the cost of meat from producers. According to one of RBC's interlocutors, Anna Mirochinenko, HEAD of the department for control of the agro-industrial complex of the FAS, said that the issue of prices for chicken and pork was also discussed within the department. As a result of the discussion, the FAS sent a request to the Cherkizovo group and “two other major market participants” (to whom exactly, during the meeting, Mirochinenko did not specify) asking them to provide information on the cost and wholesale selling prices for products and justification of the reasons for the increase.

During the meeting, Deputy Minister of Agriculture Oksana Lut said that retail chains receive notifications from suppliers and manufacturers about rising prices for poultry and pork until the end of August, said one of the participants in the meeting. In particular, the Remit meat processing plant was going to increase product prices due to the rise in the cost of raw materials: in July, its representative specified to RBC that the price increase took place “by 5–8%, depending on the range of products produced.”

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Meat producers also complain about the rise in prices and the lack of raw materials: as Lut said, the ministry received an appeal from the industry association of meat processors with a request to submit to the commission on customs and tariff regulation the issue of establishing a quota for duty-free imports of poultry and pork into Russia, the interlocutor of RBC added .

The latest available Rosstat data show that in June 2023, the average selling prices of pigs from agricultural producers were 4.6% higher than in the same month a year ago (108.4 thousand rubles per 1 ton), and poultry was released on 3.8% more expensive than in 2022 (by 107.6 thousand rubles per 1 ton). The data on agricultural prices for July has not yet been published.

At the same time, as FORBES wrote , the cost of a kilogram of chicken reached a historical maximum - over the year, poultry meat has risen in retail prices by 6.4% - to 197.9 rubles. per 1 kg of chilled and frozen meat. At the same time, the cost of 1 kg of pork in Russian stores in July 2023 practically did not differ from the level of the previous year (boneless meat went up by 0.5% - up to 406.9 rubles / kg, and meat on the bone - by 1.9% , up to 314.5 rubles/kg).