MOSCOW, April 17 (Reuters) - Russia, a major importer of U.S. pork, has lifted a ban from five U.S. pork processing plants and cold storages and suspended imports from other three, the Russian animal and plant health watchdog said on Friday.
The watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said in a statement the ban on the plants imposed from Feb.10 for "serious violations of the Russian law", was lifted from April 15 after safety guarantees were received from USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.
The list includes Smithfield Food Inc's plant at Tarheel, North Carolina.
In January, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that the ban had been imposed due to clerical errors although hog farmers suspected political reasons [ID:nN29291561.
Russia aims to reach by 2012 self-sufficiency in production of pork and poultry meat, of which the United States is the major supplier.
Rosselkhoznadzor said it had imposed a temporary ban on two U.S. cold storages and a slaughterhouse from April 20.
"We have checked a pork shipment en route to Japan and discovered that a shipment accompanied by similar documents had been already unloaded in Russia," Rosselhoznadzor's spokesman Alexei Alexeyenko said.
"We suspected smuggling and decided to suspend shipments from the three plants until the situation is clarified."
The complete list of the U.S. plants is available at http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OFO/export/lrupork.htm with new entries marked by an asterisk. (Reporting by Aleksandras Budrys)