Why did Russia just destroy a BMW racing team’s food?

RUSSIA-UKRAINE-CONFLICT-SANCTIONS-FOOD-TRADE

A worker uses a bulldozer to crush crates of peaches outside the city of Novozybkov, about 600 km from Moscow, on August 7, 2015. Russian officials on August 6 steamrollered tonnes of cheese as they began a controversial drive to destroy Western food smuggled into the crisis-hit country despite a public outcry. President Vladimir Putin last week signed a decree ordering the trashing of all food -- from gourmet cheeses to fruit and vegetables -- that breaches a year-old embargo on Western imports imposed in retaliation to sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. AFP PHOTO / ONLINER.BY (Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images)

Photograph by AFP/Getty Images

Whatever the strains of life under sanctions, you can’t say that it’s caused Russia’s bureaucrats to lose their flair for PR.

The national watchdog for consumer safety, Rospotrebnadzor, Thursday swooped on a touring BMW racing car team, seizing and destroying 1.5 tons of food it had brought with it while preparing for a race in Moscow next week.

It’s the latest in a series of high-profile actions to enforce a ban imposed last year on U.S. and E.U. food imports, a campaign which has angered many in a country which doesn’t produce enough food to feed itself and where over 10% of the people live in poverty. The sight of tons of cheese being bulldozed into the ground, or pork being incinerated, was intended to have a morale-boosting effect, but one opinion poll suggested that nearly half of those who responded disagreed with it.

Russia’s food industry has been one of few sectors to increase production this year as the government has bet heavily on a program of ‘import substitution’, but it hasn’t managed to fill the gaps in food supply left by the sanctions. Food prices rose 20% in the year to July, according to official data, and the price of goods imported from non-sanctioned countries looks set to rise again after the ruble’s slide on the foreign exchange markets in recent weeks.

The recent fall in oil prices has driven the ruble back to near a 17-year low against the dollar.

Rospotrebnadzor’s action against the BMW DTM team (DTM is a touring car championship akin to NASCAR) was, to say the least, a fair cop, at least by their own lights. Despite the sanctions being in place for over a year, the Germans made no effort to arrange alternative supplies locally. The question is now–will BMW blame the Cherkizovo Bratwurst if its drivers come up short at the weekend’s races?