Company cites unfair competition in milk scare

Albania officials also accused Kosovo of unfair trade practices after authorities there ordered the removal from the market of milk produced by two Albanian dairies, Primalat and Fast.

TIRANA, March 11 – The Primalat company, which was one of the two accused for marketing milk with higher levels of afla toxins, said that the unfair competition had brought about a lot of negative consequences to the company but also to thousands of farmers cooperating with them.
Primalat managers said they had a very negative impact after it came out that the milk they produced had higher and likely health dangerous levels of the toxins.
Aflatoxins come out by mould and can damage human and animal health if they enter the food chain in significant concentrations. In the European Union the legally permitted limit in milk is 0.005 per cent. That is some ten times lower than that in the United States, according to the authorities.
Albania officials accused Kosovo of unfair trade practices after authorities there ordered the removal from the market of milk produced by two Albanian dairies, Primalat and Fast.
Agriculture Minister Genc Ruli came out in a news conference after local authorities received the answers from a European lab in Italy of not dangerous levels of afla toxins present in the Albanian milk.
“The alfa toxin issue has not arisen as a consumer protection problem, but as an unfair trade war among countries of the region,” said Ruli.
The National Food Authority, AKU, in Tirana said that tests carried out in Italy showed its milk was safe to drink.
“The analysis has shown that the level of afla toxin is two three times higher than the recommended level in the EU,” the AKU said. “However these levels are still seven or eight times lower than those allowed in the U.S. and Canada.”
Primalat said that the case affected some 2,500 farmers where they bought the milk from.
Main shareholder Sami Gjergji also said that his company would take the necessary legal steps to make alleged authors of such a fake alarm accountable to the law.
Primalat said they had 35 percent of the market there and he also accused the Albanian authorities of not properly managing the threat or the false alarm.