What's wrong with Mercury

The Mercury electronic veterinary certification system for dairy products, which became mandatory on July 1, has become a serious problem for small businesses.

 

 

 

Previously, we reported complaints from manufacturers about short-term hang-ups in the program, but now we are talking about long-term problems that delay production. To a greater extent, small businesses have encountered difficulties.

 

"The problems started from the very beginning. First of all, they are related to the unpreparedness of veterinary staff," comments Lyubov Gorbacheva, owner of Gorbachev's V.B. KFH. "The feeling is that veterinary staff itself does not know how to work with the program. Sometimes we can't even enter it. We try to contact the veterinarians, who have to understand this - they explain to us how to work - we do as they say - nothing works. We have to cope on our own, which is a big waste of time. Time plays a key role in the supply chain.

 

Alexei Demyanov, the owner of Cheese Province, also referred to the difficulties in understanding the program interface: "Despite the fact that there were no serious failures, at first it was difficult to deal with the system, we had to act blindly.

 

A Bashkirian source who wanted to remain anonymous stressed the problems with technical support: "We literally lost ground, we don't know where to turn for help. We have to cope on our own and with the help of colleagues who have also faced this.

 

Manufacturers emphasize that the help of Mercury's services is not free, to put it mildly.

 

Correspondent of The DairyNews contacted the legal department of Svobodnyi Trud FHC and found out that every single "departure" of the veterinarian, who unloaded the products from the waybills into the program, costs from 800 rubles: "The program is very slow, and in order not to delay the delivery, we have to use the services of veterinarians. According to the official price list in the veterinary station "for the exit" veterinarian must pay (in addition to the payment for the shipment of products), on normal days of 800r, and on holidays and weekends - at a double rate. And pay for any volume - be it 300 liters, or 3 tons. And at the same time, the main tariff for shipment fee includes all control functions of the veterinarian, including departure. This is how it is provided - the veterinarian must control each shipment of goods. But in fact, we have to pay both for departure and shipment.

 

Thus, companies have no choice but to pay for this money, because of the delays they have to slow down transport on shipment. No deliveries without veterinary documents are out of the question.

 

"Ideally, we should hire a professional who can deal with this program on his own, because there is simply no one in our small firm to do it. Or we will have to give money to the veterinary service, spend time and delay deliveries," said Lubov Gorbacheva.

 

The problems also affected the technical component of the work. Alexei Kasyanov, Chief Engineer of Moloko, in a conversation with The DairyNews, noted that there were no serious failures, but in the process of work they had to "prescribe" the program for integration with the system "Mercury": "There was a problem with the formation of batches at the production site, in the interaction of the contour and mercury in the display of the "veterinarian" on shipping documents. There were also problems with the adaptation of the 1C 8.3 program with Mercury for shipment to counterparties.

 

Oleg Sirota, Chairman of the Russian Cheese Union, on the contrary, stressed that Mercury is now operating normally. A number of companies, including Nizhny Novgorod's Gubernsky Cheese Company or BeauReve-Maslovka, confirm this.

 

ROSSELKHOZNADZOR states that failures in the program have occurred, and all possible "difficulties faced by producers and participants of the circulation of finished dairy products - is the lack of development of interaction between producers and subsequent owners of the distribution network.

 

- We expect that these difficulties will be mainly overcome by the 20th of July, - summed up in the supervisory authority.

 

We shall remind you that on July 1, electronic veterinary certification for finished dairy products became mandatory. Some of the goods items in the industry have been postponed until November 1, but today it is mandatory to issue electronic veterinary certificates for cheese, butter and canned MILK.