"Bulgarian livestock farming is below the critical threshold!" This was told to the Bulgarian National Radio by the former MP and leader of the "Order, Legality and Justice" party; Yane Yanev, who today is engaged in livestock farming on a farm located about 1000 meters above sea level in Pirin.
"It is impossible, with this number of cattle, sheep, goats that are raised in Bulgaria, for the windows of numerous stores to say that they sell only Bulgarian meat! There is no such thing, something is wrong! A huge part is simply not Bulgarian!", said the media source.
"In 2023, only 106 thousand tons of total red meat production and 105,000 tons of live cattle exports. In recent years, there has been a cascading decline in Bulgarian beef production. In one year, per capita in our country, there is about 1 kg of beef", he added.
"If we compare beef consumption in Bulgaria and the EU, it will become clear that in Spain it is on average 13.6 kg, in Italy it is about 10 kg, in Germany it is about 12 kilograms. These data are from Eurostat and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food," Yanev also pointed out, emphasizing that he claims to be exceptionally prepared to speak on the topic because he is a seventh-generation cattle breeder, an agronomist engineer, who graduated with honors.
According to him, consumers have the right to know the origin of the meat they buy, and the state should be obliged to do so so that people are not misled.
"There are hundreds of thousands of tons of processed foreign meat on the stands, which is labeled as Bulgarian. I can name at least 20-30 brands. I can name 7-8 large processing plants that do not use a single kilogram of Bulgarian red meat. The institutions must react to this. If this trend continues, Bulgarian livestock breeding will be completely liquidated. Now it is below the critical threshold, if it continues like this, everything will end", Yanev added.
According to Yanev, a comprehensive strategy for the salvation and development of Bulgarian livestock farming should be adopted, and livestock farmers should be exempted from taxes.
"The main thing is production. We need to think about how to revive the Bulgarian village, where animals can be raised", he emphasized.
The former party leader said that he is no longer interested in politics and has not listened to a parliamentary debate for at least 5 years. "Politics was the most disgusting part of my life and I don't want to remember it!", he commented.