site.btaFood Safety Agency Rejects 22 t of Foods a Day at Kapitan Andreevo Checkpoint for Excess Pesticide Content

An average 6 tonnes of foods a day were rejected for high pesticide content over the past year compared to 22 tonnes daily currently, or 246% more, Deputy Agriculture Minister Ivan Hristanov said. He was speaking at a BTA-hosted news conference on the results of phyto-sanitary, health and veterinary control at the Kapitan Andreevo Checkpoint on Bulgaria's border with Turkey on Sunday.

On Thursday, European Commission auditors, accompanied by Bulgarian Food Safety Agency (BFSA) Director Hristo Daskalov, inspected the results of phyto-sanitary control at Kapitan Andreevo. 

The results of the inspection have been submitted to the General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and will also be referred to the prosecution, Hristanov said.

BFSA recently replaced a private contractor hired to check truckloads of fruits and vegetables entering Bulgaria through Kapitan Andreevo for pesticides and other plant protection products.

Hristanov presented information for 35 days until May 19, prior to BFSA’s intervention, and for 35 days after May 20 – when phyto-sanitary control at the border has been exercised by the State.

The lots with higher pesticide content before BFSA started laboratory work were 0.36%, compared to 0.63% after that. The total volume passing control for the previous period was 32,000 tonnes, 223 tonnes of which were rejected. In comparison, under the period in which BFSA began to operate at the checkpoint, 21,000 tonnes of food passed for control, 806 of which were rejected, Hristanov said. Over the same period last year, 97 tonnes of food were rejected because of pesticides, while this year BFSA found 806 tonnes at fault, an increase of 727% in the amount of food rejected for pesticides.

From January 2020 to November 2021, in 15 out of 23 months, the private lab recorded more tests than it was technically capable of performing, the Deputy Minister said. Another interesting result of the inspection, according to Hristanov, is that for July 2021, not a single rejected lot, not a single rejected kilogramme of goods was returned from the border and offered for destruction.