In the first half of 2022 Bulgaria imported ten times more lamb and mutton than it exported, according to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture. Imports of lamb are more than 70% higher than in the same period of the previous year. A total of 1102 tons of mutton and lamb were imported in the first six months of this year. 

A large part of imports was from EU member states, but 351 tonnes came from North Macedonia.  According to the co-chairman of the sheep breeders' association Simeon Karakolev, this is the origin of the cheap lamb, which the branch association warned at Easter was crashing the Bulgarian lamb market. The rest of the imported meat is not lamb, but mutton, which is not traded directly on the market, but enters the meat processing industry, probably as an undeclared substitute for veal in the composition of sausages, the industry says.

• The blue health mark guarantees that lamb is produced in a Bulgarian farm

Although Bulgaria is a country with a very long tradition in sheep breeding, in the first half of this year the production amounted to 112 tonnes of mutton and lamb, which is the lowest amount recorded for the same period of the last three years. The figures confirm claims made by farmers at the start of the year, who said that when comparing the number of sheep with the number of Bulgarians, the country's livestock farmers were producing just 150-200 grams of lamb per capita.