Stock breeders coming from all over Bulgaria will be gathering Friday for a peaceful protest organized at the Danube Bridge near Ruse.

More than 1,000 people reportedly have confirmed their participation in the action. Among them will be people coming from all over the country – Plovdiv, Blagoevgrad, Varna, Shumen, Razgrad, Vratsa, and more.

The protest will merely serve as a warning and if no prompt action is taken, stock breeders have warned that they will be willing to block the transit bridge to Romania for over a month.

‘’Over the course of the past 3-4 months, the situation has become unbearable, especially when it comes to dairy production,’’ said Stefan Petrov, a stock breeder from Ruse. ‘’ The imports of EU-assisted production that was aimed at overcoming the Russian embargo is killing local production. There is no way for us to be working under normal conditions, when we are able to produce milk at 0.6 BGN per liter and imports cost 0.45 BGN per liter.’’

He further noted that protesters will demand higher control on imports and of the quality of the products offered.

‘’Apart from that, the idea for EU-funded projects in agriculture and stock breeding has been severely distorted,’’ Petrov added. ‘’The program on agricultural development quickly turned into a program for assisting of large-scale producers, and as you can imagine, very few stock breeders fall into this category.’’