After change of standards for milk production, there is almost no food of animal origin that Serbia can offer to the EU countries. The only products that can be exported are beef meat and treated pork meat, but their export is at a level of statistic mistake.
Even before milk crisis, Serbia had deficit in foreign trade exchange of cattle products of 34 million Dollars. The Europeans want higher quality food than those being offered by Serbian manufacturers.
‘Serbia has a quota of 8,700 tons of baby beef for export to the EU market, but in 2012 it exported only about 700 tons. We do not export pork meat because we vaccinate animals, what European standards do not allow. We are selling meat products in the CEFTA countries’, Vojislav Stankovic, advisor at the Serbian Chamber of Commerce says.
Milan Prostran, economist in agriculture says that the biggest problem is how to put under control the food being sold in the gray zone.
Since the Minister of Agriculture Goran Knezevic shall have tomorrow a meeting with his counterparts in the neighboring countries in order to discuss mutual issues in the sphere of food safety, it is obvious that the so far system of food control has not given adequate results in Serbia.
Source Blic
