The Agricultural Policy Ministry expects meat imports into Ukraine to reduce by 7,000 tons or 3.4% to 200,000 tons in 2008, compared with 2007.

Vitalii Pakholiuk, the head of the division for development of the processing sectors at the Agricultural Policy Ministry's department of livestock markets, announced this at a conference that was held as part of the fifth international specialized exhibition "World of Ice Creams. Dairy and Meat Industry."

According to Pakholiuk, the Agricultural Policy Ministry expects 200,000 tons of meat to be imported into Ukraine in 2008, including 150,000 tons of beef and 50,000 tons of pork.

He announced that representatives of the Agricultural Policy Ministry recently met with representatives of meat processing enterprises and that major meat processing enterprises said at the meeting that their requirement for pork this year could exceed the expected quantity while their requirement for beef could be lower than the forecast quantity.

According to him, meat is imported into Ukraine mainly from South America, particularly Argentina and Brazil.

The Agricultural Policy Ministry is forecasting that locally produced meat will be sufficient to fully meet the demand on the Ukrainian market in 2009 so that meat will not have to be imported.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, producers of meat and meat products said on February 20 that they were concerned by an increase in illegal importation of meat and meat raw materials into Ukraine.

Former deputy agricultural policy minister Viktor Slauta said in September 2007 that Ukraine might stop importing meat between late 2008 and early 2008 for meeting demand on the domestic market because of saturation of the domestic market with locally produced meat.