“Producers negotiate what poisons to put into the food”. The participants in the National Round Table “The food products quality – guarantee for the success of the companies from the branch and consumers’ protection” proposed this full of fun heading to attract the media attention. The organized by the Food Processing Industry Union and the Federation of the Science and Technical Unions meeting was held on 19 May. Experts from various departments and ministries, branch unions of the meat and milk processing companies and other consumer organizations, institutes, the National Veterinary Medical Service and consultant firms took place in it.

Within the forum Mr. Cyril Vatev, co-manager of TANDEM, introduced the manual for the meet products consumer, published with the support of three independent consumer organizations: Bulgarian Consumer Academy, Bulgarian National Consumer Association and Bulgarian Consumer Federation. The manual was created by experts because of the intensifying negative social opinion about Bulgarian meat products as a result of its insufficient knowledge.

During the meeting it became clear that food quality was not in the regulations range in contrast to the safety concept. According to the experts Bulgarian producers have focused on the safety conditions implementation and for that reason they have neglected quality. Of both concepts quality is the more common; the certified bodies give different definitions of quality but they do not control it. The co-manager of TANDEM noticed that the consumer often looked for a clean label – without the so called E-s among the ingredients: “As producers we can guarantee that no food manufacturer has the chance to present in the modern network of shops without conservation agents and supplements which lead to keeping the good look and durability of the product. We can prepare such food only at home. Even the fresh meat, coming from EU, now lasts and does not lose its colour for 12 days – displayed on the shop-window, without oxidizing.”

The Bulgarian Meat Processors Association executive manager Dr. Svetla Chamova defined the quality control as a shared responsibility – among the producers and the tradesmen, the controlling bodies and the consumers. “The strength of the chain is defined by its weakest link”, she also said. The Consumer Federation in Bulgaria executive secretary engineer Pavel Karlev added that the consumer must know what to search, before spending his money, and who to search, if he was happy from the thing he had bought. Mr. Vatev explained that the topic of food quality is a subjective reflection of the objective reality. There are numerous factors, defining human health: heredity, lifestyle, environment and feeding, therefore it is not correct to explain health problems only with feeding.

One of the problems pointed out by Dr. Chamova, is the prolonged with three years term for restructuring of the enterprises after the entering of Bulgaria in EU. She insisted that in the end of 2006 no company wanted that prolongation and that policy is intolerable, aiming to destroy the whole branch. On the occasion of her statement the co-manager of TANDEM underlined that the companies which invested in their restructuring, creating control systems, trained their staff, integrated special software to meet European requirements in legally regulated terms, are damaged the worst.

Another problem, emphasized by the meat products manufacturer, was the lack of clarity which laboratory apparatuses are considered reliable. Different laboratories examine different indices. In his opinion, at the moment the competition is who meets the requirements and who does not, but soon, when all companies began to meet the requirements, a problem will arise if the self-control, the companies exercise in their own laboratories is reliable. TANDEM has such lab, too.

Dr. Chamova commented on the National recommendations for healthy feeding from the Ministry of Health care. She thinks “they are rewritten from other countries’ recommendations”. She noticed that the Ministry recommends people to decrease meat consumption, replacing it with a vegetable consumption. However statistics shows that Bulgaria is number 14 in Europe at meat consumption. The highest meat consumption in an EU country is about 60kg per capita. In Bulgaria it is as twice as less – 30kg, therefore according Dr. Chamova that recommendation is wrongly conveyed from foreign experience.
She also thinks that there is no policy and state strategy concerning agriculture, big trade network control, policy, capable to force the tourist industry to offer the tourists quality goods as well as policy regarding intellectual property protection.