As part of measures from its Programme for Economic Recovery, the government today adopted a regulation on public interventions and support for private beef storage facilities, with Cobankovic warning that media reports regarding the safety and quality of meat and meat products in Croatia were false.
"I fully guarantee that the meat consumed by Croatian citizens is safe," Cobankovic said, dismissing as untrue media reports that Croatia was importing frozen meat as old as ten years.
Cobankovic stressed that Croatia had closed the policy area No. 12, Food Safety, in its EU accession talks.
"EU rules apply in Croatia," he said, adding that Croatian authorities had completed the categorisation of food-selling establishments and that his ministry, the Health Ministry and the State Inspectorate were in charge of controlling the import, production and sale of meat and meat products.
Health Minister Darko Milinovic said his ministry had carried out inspections that prove that Croatians eat food that meets health standards.
In the first half of this year, the Health Ministry did more than 2,000 checks and collected 250 samples, he said.
"We found only one sample that did not meet the necessary health standards and pressed charges," Milinovic said.
The government today also adopted a decision on establishing the starting price for the sale of state-owned real estate, under which the starting price for such property would be determined by an expert task force to be appointed by the government's Property Commission.
State-owned property is sold in public tenders, and if no bid is submitted, the tender is repeated 15 days after the expiry of the deadline for bid submission. In a second tender, the property can be sold at a price reduced by a maximum 50 percent of the initial price.
A state secretary at the central state office for the management of state-owned property, Jozo Sarac, said that so far starting prices of state-owned real estate had been too high, which was why there had been little interest in it.
"This decision could contribute to activating the potential that is not being used now, notably military facilities," Sarac said.