Petar Stoyanovich Criticizes Food Control in Bulgaria

His comment to bTV was prompted by yet another case involving the distribution of fake butter in the Bulgarian retail network, offered to consumers as an original German product. According to the historian, the presence of such goods on the market is inexplicable for a modern European state.

I cannot understand how a country that wants to function in a civilized and European way can allow an original and an imitation to stand side by side on the market, Stoyanovich said. He drew a parallel with the past, noting that even in periods of far greater poverty there had been an effort toward regulation. Even when Bulgaria lived many times poorer, there were also ground-up dogs, kennels and all, but at least there was a serious attempt by the state to control at least the average level of what we eat, the historian commented. Stoyanovich emphasized that the problem is far from limited to butter and covers the entire range of dairy and meat products, such as cheese and sausages.

The sharpest criticism in his statement was directed at the tacit agreement among all participants in the chain, which allows products with minimal or no real nutritional content to survive on the market. This is collusion, an oath of silence between the state, producers and consumers over the fact that, to a large extent, we eat poor-quality and even deadly things. It is not possible for a cheese to contain 10% product and everything else to be something out of this world. This is collusion of criminality, he said.

According to him, it would be better to acknowledge the real production capacity than to offer substitutes. But it should be said – we can produce 20% real butter, Stoyanovich added, stressing that we eat the way we think – with waste.