Speaking at a roundtable here Thursday on whether Bulgarian meat products have good value, Mihail Mihaylov, CEO of the National union of cattle breeders in Bulgaria, said that according to official data, Bulgarian breeders produce 1.2 kg of beef per capita per year.
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Mihaylov said that this results in the presence of spoiled meat on the market, as it gets defrosted numerous times by the time it reaches the consumer.
The forum took place in BTA's national club in Sofia as part of a series of events organized by the Foundation For Achievable Quality Food.
Another problem that Mihaylov pointed out is the lack of specialized cow breeds for meat. He stated that of the 90,000 animals in the country that are declared for meat, only 14,000 to 15,000 are proper beef cattle.
Simeon Karakolev, co-chair of the National Sheep and Goat Breeding Association, said: "A significant share of the consumers are unclear of what they consume. If a product's label says that it was made according to the Bulgarian State Standard, this does not necessarily mean that the raw materials were Bulgarian. That is why we have been fighting for years to change the Bulgarian State Standard, making it mandatory for the raw material to be of Bulgarian origin, if the product were to meet the Standard's requirements".
Karakolev quoted data, according to which Bulgaria imported some 700 to 800 tonnes of mutton, mostly from Spain, which is likely to have been used as an ingredient in sausages and possibly passed off as beef or pork.
Tatyana Nikolova of the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency said that her organization is uncompromising with food safety and takes fully adequate measures. She said that anything that comes out of the animal farms in Bulgaria has its origin guaranteed. ■
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