Did Bulgaria import poisonous grain from Ukraine? No, that's not true: Bulgaria is part of the EU and adheres to its strict import regulations.
Publications on various information sites (for example here and here), claimed that the grain imported from Ukraine to Bulgaria was poisonous and that there are no licensed laboratories in Bulgaria to control these imports. According to the official statement of the Bulgarian Agency for Food Safety, Ukrainian grain and sunflower imports into the country are regulated and so far, no residual amounts of pesticides, heavy metals, presence of GMOs, or the presence of radioactivity have been detected.
This claim appeared in a TikTok video (archived here) on May 13, 2023, under the title, translated from Bulgarian to English, "Poisonous grain from Ukraine." It opened (as translated):
Ukrainian wheat sample results - full of infections, does not cover any requirements, gnawed by rats, full of feces. This is what they put in our bread at the behest of Europe. Resignation and life imprisonment for those who imported it, for the government and the president.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed May 17 22:07:51 2023 UTC)
The narrator refers to a receipt from an alleged test, carried out by a private laboratory, which in no way proves that the sample is actually of Ukrainian wheat.
It is also not true that there is no quality control of the Ukrainian grain entering Bulgaria. The EU has strict requirements for food products that enter its market, and Ukrainian grain is no exception. The official statement of the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency to the Bulgarian National Radio on April 24, 2023, says that Ukrainian grain tests have been carried out since 2022 in accredited laboratories, and so far no samples have been found to be contaminated.
More Lead Stories fact checks, debunking claims that certain foods are dangerous, can be found here and here.
