POULTRY meat and products in Bulgaria are completely safe and people should have no worry about eating them.

This was the message after a meeting between four Cabinet ministers and members of poultry breeders’ associations held on January 24, Bulgarian news agency BTA reported. Health Minister Radoslav Gaidarski, Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski, Economy and Energy Minister Roumen Ovcharov, and Agriculture and Forestry Minister Nihat Kabil discussed measures aimed at compensating Bulgarian breeders for financial losses following the outbreak of bird flu in neighbouring Turkey. 

The four ministers agreed to set up a joint working group to set out concrete measures to assist the poultry business and raise public awareness of the safety of Bulgarian-produced bird meat.

Bulgaria has not yet detected bird flu within its borders but general public concern that followed deaths in Turkey has led to domestic consumption of poultry meat dropping between three and four fold since the beginning of 2006, according to Ivan Angelov, chairperson of the Eggs and Poultry Products Board.

The ministers agreed that a Solidarity Fund should be set up to collect voluntary donations to assist a response to the possible spread of bird flu in Bulgaria.

Kabil said that his ministry had the resources to help poultry farmers get through the crisis.

Oresharski said that poultry farms would get nearly 10 million leva in government compensation for losses caused by the bird flu panic.

The amount will be provided as assistance to the sector, which employs 15 000 people. Oresharski did not say how the state would fund the money and the source of the funding. “The mechanism for distribution of the money has not been agreed yet,” he said.

Another possible solution being discussed is for the government to make poultry producers exempt from Value Added Tax (VAT).

The provisional help will only compensate for 20 to 30 per cent of farmers’ losses. Chicken meat has dropped in price to two leva a kg and eggs at present cost 0.7 each.