Dairy producers will start protests in front of the Agriculture and Food Ministry on December 27 2007 because of numerous problems in the sector, dairy producers representative Deyan Rusinov said.

Problems had been accumulating in the sector for years and “if the dairy producers survived since 2002, it was because of loans which they now cannot pay off,” he said, as quoted by Focus news agency.

The price of fodder was among the main problems facing dairy producers because it was higher than the price that dairy products were sold at.

High fodder prices affected not only the producers, but also consumers, because prices in shops were rising too, Rusinov said.

A possible solution was to increase purchase prices and quotas for milk. Currently the purchase quotas amounted to half of the milk produced. As a result, 250 000 animals had to be slaughtered.

Lyudmila Todorova, head of the union of Bulgarian agrarian associations, said that the union supported the quota increase demands. The subsidies would affect the end-prices of dairy products, she said.

The funds needed for fodder could be granted from the Budget surplus or from EU structural funds. “We do not want compensation, but investment in the Bulgarian dairy production industry,” she said.