Europe is reducing livestock, is this a chance for Serbia?

Published on 20. March 2023., News

Today is World Meat Free Day. Total meat production is worth 900 billion dollars and meat substitutes worth 6 billion dollars. However, food based on plant proteins has an annual growth of 10 to 20 percent.

On the other hand, animal husbandry is decreasing. Farms are being abolished. Especially in the European Union, whose Green Agenda has marked the production of meat, milk and eggs as major polluters.

Although Serbia is in the process of joining, it is not the path we should follow. Substitute meat products based on vegetable proteins are a big niche for our agriculture, but animal husbandry must not suffer, according to Miljan Ždrale, director of the agribusiness sector of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for Central and Southeastern Europe.

He says that we will still have to work harder in meat production to improve environmental protection standards, treatment of animals, rearing conditions and waste disposal, because companies that do not do this will bear additional tax burdens.

Soy is the most important raw material for meat and milk substitute products. The domestic company “Soja protein” became the property of the American giant precisely because of the advantage of the fact that Serbia is a country where the production of GMOs is not allowed.

Guest of Dnevnik, Miljan Ždrale, believes that this company is the Mercedes of the Serbian food sector because it can produce protein concentrates and isolates that are used in human and animal nutrition, but above all in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry, where GMOs are not allowed.

Deficit goods on the European market that we can produce in much larger quantities, in addition to sugar, are also oilseeds: sunflower, rapeseed.

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