The State Duma proposed obliging manufacturers to produce products only in accordance with GOST standards

По словам Чернышова, продукты питания, представленные на прилавках под видом колбасы, молока, хлеба, могут соответствовать ТУ, но фактически являться низкокачественным суррогатом. Размытые стандарты позволяют использовать различные добавки и усилители вкуса, которые не приносят пользы человеку. Поэтому депутат считает необходимым отменить технические условия и вернуть ГОСТы как гарант качества продукции.

В текущих экономических условиях мера выглядит скорее несвоевременной, считает младший директор по корпоративным и суверенным рейтингам «Эксперт РА» Михаил Никонов. «Обязательное введение ГОСТа может сильно ударить по кошельку потребителей в условиях, когда проинфляционные риски преобладают, а экономика адаптируется к новым реалиям, — сказал он. — Издержки производителей вырастут, те начнут сокращать объемы выпуска, что способно повлечь за собой образование дефицита продукции и рост цен. Финансовые показатели производителей также могут ухудшиться». По мнению Никонова, на сегодняшний день сохранение статуса-кво в этом вопросе было бы более оптимальным. 

General DIRECTOR of Progress Agro Leonid Ragozin noted that the company’s processing enterprises - a dairy plant and a MEAT processing plant  - produce most of their products in accordance with GOST. Only yoghurts and whey are produced according to the general national standard. “The presence of specifications allows us to saturate the market with both a very affordable low-quality product and a unique one, the recipe of which will consist of natural ingredients and its price will be high. If specifications are available, a delicacy group can also be offered,” he noted. On the other hand, according to Ragozin, production only according to GOST can make meat products more expensive. “Many manufacturers will have to shift the economy to other tracks, and this will lead to an increase in production costs,” he explained.

As research by Roskachestvo shows, most Russian products today are of high quality and safe, their number is growing every year, says Dmitry Leonov, deputy chairman of the board of the Rusprodsoyuz association. “Therefore, preserving the opportunity for the manufacturer to choose what standards to produce products by, together with strengthening liability measures for the production of low-quality products, in our opinion, seems more correct than the introduction of such directives,” he said.

In the current difficult and unstable economic situation, this may have a negative impact on the range of food products, Leonov believes. In addition, specifications do not mean at all that the products are worse than those produced according to GOST, he emphasized. “Often, the technical conditions of enterprises meet higher quality standards than the requirements of industry GOSTs. After all, most GOSTs were developed in Soviet times, since then production technologies have stepped far forward,” Leonov noted.

Deputy General Director of the Russian MILK company Anna Boyko-Velikaya believes that Chernyshov’s idea is “initially doomed to failure, since it does not take into account the understanding of what GOSTs and technical specifications are in modern conditions.” “At our TU company, GOST standards are specified. For example, our specifications do not provide for the use of milk powder where GOST allows it. Or we have prescribed the use of milk not lower than the first grade, when GOST also allows second grade milk ,” she said.  

In addition, there are many products for which there are no GOST standards at all, continues Boyko-Velikaya. “The issue of goods from our closest neighboring countries – Kazakhstan and Belarus – also arises. And there are plenty of food products from these countries on the shelves of Russian stores. What will happen to them, according to the bill’s initiator?” she asks.

General Director of Petrova 5 Consulting Marina Petrova said that if GOST specifies the product parameters and production method, then the production of goods in accordance with the specifications makes it possible to expand variability, make the assortment unique and more competitive. “The availability of products on the market both in accordance with GOST and TU allows us to provide the consumer with the right to choose according to his taste preferences and financial capabilities,” she believes. “Many companies specify higher requirements in technical specifications than in GOST, and their products are not inferior to the quality of GOST, and sometimes even exceed it.”

Albina Koryagina, a partner at the NEO consulting company, also doubts the viability of the new proposal. In her opinion, “the one-time introduction of analogues of GOST standards will lead to a complete collapse of food production.” “Enterprises will not be able to rebuild at once - some simply will not be able to produce products on their equipment that comply with GOST, the vast majority of companies will urgently need to change the entire logistics of supplying raw materials for production. The market currently does not have such a volume of raw materials and component recipes in warehouses that all products can be manufactured according to these standards,” she explained. At the same time, Koryagina agrees that not all food products produced in RUSSIA meet the expected quality. Koryagina believes that work needs to be done in this direction, 

At the end of August, the Federation Council raised the issue of legislative refusal to use technical conditions in food production and a return to GOST requirements. Ragozin said that the topic of introducing mandatory production according to GOST standards will constantly come up, primarily because of unscrupulous manufacturers. “It’s no secret that you can sell a product according to specifications that is made from the cheapest components,” he explained.

At the beginning of August, the Prosecutor General's Office proposed changing GOST standards for food products in order to prevent a decrease in the volume of goods in packaging without changing the price . The agency proposed to establish uniform packaging requirements. It was also reported that the Ministry of Industry and Trade is working to unify packaging standards, proposing to round container sizes to whole numbers.