Bosnia and Herzegovina has less and less domestic meat, we are eating European reserves

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - While the state boasts hundreds of millions of convertible marks distributed to farmers, those who actually are farmers say it is finally time to change the Law, so that this money reaches the true, not fake producers.

At the end of this second pandemic year with COVID, which, along with drought, caused significant damage to agricultural production, the biggest problems are, however, import lobbies, and with them domestic meat processors, due to whom the fattening of cattle is most often abandoned, and we eat meat from European reserves. Villages are dying out, and the land remains deserted.

"We eat 99% imported meat, it is bought from some countries, we have eaten all European reserves" - this is how, at the end of the year, not without bitterness, the president of the Association of Milk and Meat Producers of SBK, Amir Bulut, explains the situation in meat production in the Central Bosnia Canton, which, according to official data, has just over a thousand bulls and heifers in breeding, which is insufficient to meet the meat needs in this area.

However, unfortunately, he says, despite this, marketing domestic produce, for which there is a prescribed procedure, is almost an impossible mission, so it is not surprising that in the first nine months of this year alone, 53.1 million kilograms of meat and other slaughterhouse products were imported into Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"Either they reduce our price or they ask us for half of those incentives that we are supposed to receive. This year and last year, many people abandoned the fattening of cattle, they switched to milk," adds Bulut.