Newspaper: Turn to light ‘red light’ for Armenia products in Russia market reaches brandy

Past daily of Armenia writes as follows, in particular: The turn to light a “red light” before Armenian products in the Russia market has reached the brand brandy. Recently, the news feed was flooded with the information spread by Russian agencies that almost 90% of Armenian brandies sold in Russian stores are not "safe," and almost half of the products contain non-grape spirits.

(…). Of course, the "political component" in this story cannot be excluded either, considering the intensity with which [Armenian PM Nikol] Pashinyan is spoiling [Armenia’s] relations with Russia.

But that being said, there are at least two very important circumstances. The first: this once again shows what a poor state it is in terms of ensuring food safety. It turns out that there is no overseeing in this domain, or it is purely formal in nature. (…). As a result, the reputation of Armenian products goes bad abroad, harming honest producers as well.

The other important and very worrying circumstance is that we also use all that: agricultural products, other types of food, and why not—brandy itself. That is, it turns out that in the case of [Armenia’s] export, we suddenly learn about the harmfulness—from the announcements of structures of foreign countries, in that—whereas we use all that in our domestic market. It is strange that Armenia's NGOs operating in the name of consumer protection do not try to initiate additional inspections of products deemed poor quality by the RF [(Russian Federation)]. We do not specifically note the [Armenian] state bodies [here] because it is clear that there is even no place to rely on them.