Food agency says it has enough staff to check grain cargoes at the border
Latvia's Food and Veterinary Service says its current resources are sufficient to carry out new border checks on grain shipments from third countries, with regional inspectors available if needed.
Latvia's Food and Veterinary Service (PVD) has confirmed to the LETA news agency that its existing capacity is sufficient to carry out newly introduced border inspections of grain cargoes. If extra staff are needed, inspectors from the agency's regional offices will be brought in, and since carriers themselves cover the cost of the inspections, no additional state funding is required.
Tatjana Garanča, deputy head of PVD's Border Control Department, said around 500 grain transit shipments arriving from Russia have been checked so far. Because the senders and recipients of these cargoes mostly stay the same, the agency — working with the State Revenue Service's Customs Board — relies on risk analysis, and only ten grain shipments have had samples taken for laboratory testing. Results of those tests could take a month or longer.
Legal changes and background
On September 24, the Saeima urgently adopted amendments to the Law on the Circulation of Animal Feed, which subject grain cargoes from third countries to border control. According to the Saeima press service, the goal is to prevent cargo stolen from Ukraine, including grain, from being transported through Latvian territory. Latvia had already banned the release of Russian and Belarusian agricultural and feed products into free circulation, and in August 2026 that ban was expanded further. Under the external transit customs procedure, goods from third countries can cross Latvian and EU customs territory without entering the EU market.
Data from the State Revenue Service shows a sharp rise in grain transit in September. Between September 1 and 24, 253,623 tonnes of grain passed through Latvia from Russia — nearly double the total for all of September 2025 — while 40,101 tonnes arrived from Belarus in the same period, compared with none in September last year. From January 1 to September 24 this year, 593,663 tonnes transited from Russia, down 8.9% from the whole of 2025, while the volume from Belarus reached 116,847 tonnes — 913 times more than during all of 2025.
