Following an order by President Vladimir V. Putin, officials threw huge piles of pork, tomatoes, peaches and cheese into landfills and garbage incinerators.
The frenzy, remarkable even by the standards of Russia's recent politicization of food supplies, was gleefully reported by Russian state television.
"You can see behind me cheese that was made nobody knows where, without labels," Yekaterina Mironova, a journalist on Rossiya 24 television, standing before a gigantic mound of orange cheese rounds, as a bulldozer revved its engine in the background.
Varoom, varoom, clank, clank, clank.
The offending cheese, she said, would be plowed into a landfill in the Belgorod region of western Russia.
News reports chronicled the destruction throughout the day, along the entire breadth of Russia's western border, from Orenburg in the south to St. Petersburg in the north.