{"id":11937,"date":"2025-11-29T10:45:59","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T09:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/?p=11937"},"modified":"2025-12-10T10:53:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T09:53:36","slug":"informer-turns-rtls-report-on-croatian-milk-into-praise-for-serbian-president-vucic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/2025\/11\/29\/informer-turns-rtls-report-on-croatian-milk-into-praise-for-serbian-president-vucic\/","title":{"rendered":"Informer Turns Rtl\u2019s Report on Croatian Milk Into Praise for Serbian President Vu\u010di\u0107"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Original article<\/em><\/a> (in Serbian) was published on 28\/11\/2025; Author: Stefan Kosanovi\u0107<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A Serbian pro-government tabloid, Informer, claimed on Sunday that Croatia\u2019s RTL had aired a segment asking \u201chow Vu\u010di\u0107 managed\u201d to make Serbia produce more milk than Croatia. But the Serbian president is not mentioned in the RTL report at all. The broadcaster simply cited Eurostat figures showing Serbia slightly ahead of Croatia in annual milk output – though both countries remain in the lower tier of the European ranking. Meanwhile, Serbia\u2019s dairy sector is grappling with mounting difficulties at home. The government has again postponed harmonizing regulations with the EU\u2019s stricter limits on aflatoxin, a move farmers say undermines food safety and export prospects. Producers have also been warning for months about falling farm-gate prices, stalled or selective purchasing, and alleged market manipulation\u2014pressures that have driven some to dump unsold milk and take to the streets in protest.<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShock on Croatia\u2019s RTL – they\u2019re whining at the top of their lungs: \u2018How did Vu\u010di\u0107 pull this off?!\u2019\u201d reads the headline of a story published on the Informer portal<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost the entire text was lifted from a pro-government X (formerly Twitter) account called \u201cDetektor la\u017ei\u201d (\u201cLie Detector\u201d) which claims that Croatian television aired a report stating Serbia produces as much as 190% more milk than Croatia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although such a segment did air on the Croatian TV channel, Serbia\u2019s president is not mentioned in it, nor does the RTL journalist ask \u201chow he managed to do it,\u201d as Informer\u2019s headline suggests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

RTL\u2019s report<\/a> notes that the number of cows in Croatia has halved, and that consumers are increasingly turning to imported milk, since domestic production covers only about 40% of demand. Serbia is mentioned in the context of the figure that it produced 190% more milk than Croatia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Informer\u2019s version, that single sentence is turned into outright propaganda, with claims that \u201cthe Croats are wailing at the top of their lungs because the agricultural measures of Serbian President Aleksandar Vu\u010di\u0107 have left Croatia far behind our country when it comes to milk production.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But is everything in Serbia really that ideal when it comes to milk?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of November, the Serbian government decided to postpone for another year the introduction of a stricter, lower limit for aflatoxin in milk. Instead of the new rules taking effect on December 1 this year, the deadline has been pushed back to the same date in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new threshold would cap aflatoxin at 0.05 micrograms per kilogram – the European standard Serbia is meant to align with. Instead, the current limit remains in force, five times higher, at 0.25 micrograms per kilogram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And a look at the Eurostat table from which RTL drew its annual milk-production figures shows that Serbia is not near the top, but closer to the bottom of the list. In a sample of 30 countries, Serbia ranks 21st.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind Serbia on the Eurostat list are the island states of Malta and Cyprus, followed by Croatia, Luxembourg and Slovenia \u2014 countries that are territorially far smaller. They are followed by Bulgaria, as well as Slovakia, Estonia and Latvia, whose output is comparable to Serbia\u2019s but still lower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of these countries apply the standard allowing no more than 0.05 micrograms of aflatoxin per kilogram, which raises the question of whether their production would still trail Serbia\u2019s if Serbia introduced the same, more stringent limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serbia is outproduced by 20 countries, including some not usually seen as major milk producers, such as Lithuania, Finland and Portugal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milk dumping and farmers\u2019 protests this year<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

That the situation in Serbia\u2019s dairy sector is nowhere near as ideal as Informer implies is underscored by a string of farmers\u2019 protests over the past years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the very start of this year, farmers in Bogati\u0107 staged a tractor convoy protest, warning that things were getting \u201cworse day by day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They told N1<\/a> at the time that dairies had announced a cut in purchase prices due to massive imports, and said that talks they had held with the Agriculture Ministry in previous years had produced no results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some smaller, family-run farms hit early in the year by dairies halting<\/a> collection were forced to pour out up to 850 liters of milk a day. Informer, for instance, did not ask then \u201chow Vu\u010di\u0107 managed to pull it off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early July, the Association of Cattle Breeders of Central Serbia announced it would dump three tons of milk<\/a> in Gru\u017ea in protest over lower purchase prices, but later called off the action<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group also pointed to a series of other problems facing small producers. The Agriculture Ministry said farmers had voiced serious concern that some dairies may be abusing their market position \u201cthrough artificially reporting milk surpluses and inaccurate yield calculations – that is, the ratio between collected milk and the final products that appear on the market.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original article (in Serbian) was published on 28\/11\/2025; Author: Stefan Kosanovi\u0107 A Serbian pro-government tabloid, Informer, claimed on Sunday that Croatia\u2019s RTL had aired a segment asking \u201chow Vu\u010di\u0107 managed\u201d to make Serbia produce more milk than Croatia. But the Serbian president is not mentioned in the RTL report at all. The broadcaster simply cited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[25,29,28,154],"class_list":["post-11937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fact-checks","tag-aleksandar-vucic","tag-croatia","tag-serbia","tag-tabloid"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11939,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11937\/revisions\/11939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seecheck.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}