Inspectors from Bulgaria's Food Safety Agency checked 13 places selling food from Turkey and found goods with no Bulgarian-language label in five of them. There were no papers on where the food came from or on its safety either. Inspectors pulled about 100 kg from sale, the agency's press office said.
The food control and border control department carried out the checks. The items with no labels or papers included dairy and meat products, long-life and fresh pastries, sweets, dried fruit, cereals, pulses, canned goods and olive oil.
Inspectors drew up one report for an administrative offence. They have called in the other traders to the regional food safety office in Sofia, where they will face action.
At one of the places, the papers that came with the goods were incomplete, so inspectors could not trace where the food came from. It had come from a trader who rents space in a warehouse in Plovdiv, and the agency has passed the case on to the regional food safety office there.
Inspectors also ordered a stall at the Dimitar Petkov market to stop trading. There they found close to 400 kg and 41 litres of food from Turkey with no papers on its origin or safety: meat and dairy products, sweets, pulses, olives, jam, pickles, sauces, and sunflower and olive oil.
The agency said the checks cover Bulgarian-language labelling as well as papers on origin, safety and traceability, and that they are still going on.
BTA recalls that in the first half of September, border police found 2.2 tonnes of food of unknown origin in two buses and a van that had crossed at the Malko Tarnovo border checkpoint. Officers stopped the three vehicles for a check on the edge of the village of Krushevets, in Sozopol municipality, after a tip-off from border police.