Large canned fish manufacturer accuses industry of mass counterfeiting of saury

The manager of the Dobroflot group, Alexander Yefremov, told RBC that a few months ago the company drew attention to the fact that there are a lot of canned saury on store shelves, and Dobroflot's products are not sold due to the high price. At the same time, Yefremov claims that except for Dobroflot, no one in Russia catches saury. The company studied customs statistics - it turned out that no one had brought it here.

“There can be no raw materials, and the counters are full of saury. We take tests and understand that it is fake”, - Yefremov said. According to him, producers add herring to the banks instead of saury. Dobroflot concluded that 54% of canned saury is counterfeit - about 1.4 million cans per month. Moreover, the counterfeit is sold at least in the stores of 19 retail chains.

Rospotrebnadzor cites different information - only 11 (or 0.6%) out of 11.9 thousand samples of canned saury, which the department investigated, turned out to be fake. The Rosselkhoznadzor also assures that the counterfeit is not large-scale.

Yefremov believes that they began to fake saury because of the increased prices for raw materials. Over the past year, the cost of this fish has increased by 30-40%, while herring is 15-20% cheaper. This is due to the reduction in the saury catch. According to experts, the saury from the coastal shores was replaced by the Iwashi sardine. Therefore, mainly imported raw materials are now used for the production of canned food. It is imported to Russia from China, Japan, Korea and Morocco. Although the volume of imports is also falling.