Finland to export eggs, egg products to Japan

Finnish eggs and egg products will soon be found on the Japanese market, said an official press release.

Agreement on licensing these exports was reached in Tokyo during the visit by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland and Finnish Food Safety Authority to negotiate the matter.

The negotiations took place in connection with FOODEX, the most significant fair in Japan this year, where twelve Finnish food and beverage companies also had a common Food from Finland stand.

The export of Finnish eggs and egg products to Japan has been promoted as part of the Government key project concerning food exports. In the context of the key project the Finnish Food Safety Authority has been able to increase the personnel resources to carry out export analyses and studies.

“The key project enables Finnish food to be exported to market areas outside the EU. Opening the access to these markets is always preceded by negotiations between the relevant public authorities of the countries concerned. Thanks to the good relations between Finland and Japan and contacts between the authorities, the negotiations ran very smoothly”, said Permanent Secretary Jaana Husu-Kallio, who led the talks in Tokyo.

Japan is the second destination for Finnish egg and egg product exports on the Asian market as egg product exports to Hong Kong got started in May 2017. The new export licence is also a follow-up to the licence to export poultry meat to Japan obtained a year ago

Because of the good situation in terms of salmonella and avian influenza in Finland, there is high demand for Finnish poultry products on the world markets.

Finnish eggs are something quite unique because hardly any antibiotic residues have been found in them for almost ten years. Finnish egg production was also in no way connected to the scandal around the egg contamination by the fipronil insecticide.

“It is great to find new markets for high-quality Finnish food in the world. The objective set in the Government programme was to improve our trade balance in foodstuffs by EUR 500 million by 2020. Eggs gaining access to the Japanese market is yet another major achievement in terms of good news in the export sector. Pure Finnish foods are now really finding their way into the high value added product market”, said Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Jari Leppä.

In Tokyo work was also done to promote a project concerning beef exports, where the next step is an inspection visit by Japanese authorities to Finland.

“Besides food exports, the Japanese market is opening to our animal breeding material, pig sperm in particular. This is also founded on the exceptionally good animal disease situation in Finland”, Husu-Kallio said.