Western food in Bulgaria under scrutiny
The Bulgarian Food Safety Agency has examined differences in the quality and prices of international companies' products and announced on Wednesday that in around 20 percent of the cases examined the quality of products sold in Bulgaria was lower. In addition, some food products cost considerably more in Bulgaria than in Western Europe. Bulgarian media are hardly up in arms over the issue, however.
Government doesn't care what we eat
There is no sign that the Bulgarian government even takes the question of food quality seriously, Duma fumes:
“The height of the scandal came a few months ago. The more courageous Eastern European governments caused a stir and demanded that Brussels solve the problem. At that time Borisov had other problems on his mind because after the debacle of the presidential elections his grip on power was at risk. The last thing his battered government was worried about was what the people eat. To save face after the elections, it did decide to show some concern, and tasked the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency with looking into what everyone had already known for ages. ... There's no talk of drawing consequences. The whole thing looks more like it was just staged - and badly - and will come to nothing. Unfortunately.”
Mafia controls the prices
Club Z argues that it is not the multinationals who are mainly to blame for the higher food prices:
“Certainly, the big European food companies are no angels of innocence. But the Bulgarian importers and middlemen bear a far larger portion of the blame for retail prices being higher here in comparison to the West. … It's not the EU but the mafia that is making everything so expensive in Bulgaria. The same scam is being pulled off with petrol prices and government contracts. … It's going on everywhere. But the mafia's media won't tell you that. Instead the [television channel] bTV talks of 'drastic price differences and differences in quality' between Bulgaria and Western Europe. This isn't fake news, it's pure propaganda.”