At the opening of the Mohács slaughterhouse facility of MCS Vágóhíd Zrt. on Tuesday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that the Hungarian meat industry has regained its self-confidence, and will soon also regain its former reputation. The company is a strategic partner of the Bonafarm Group, and is also a supplier to Pick Szeged Zrt., which forms part of Bonafarm.
The Prime Minister said that in order to rescue the Hungarian meat industry it was necessary not only to create order in the domestic pork production sector and to develop a strategy for it, but also to have businesses in Hungary such as the Bonafarm Group. The latter has sales revenues of HUF 170 billion, pays HUF 8 billion in taxes to the central budget, and provides six thousand jobs.
In his speech Mr. Orbán described the Mohács slaughterhouse – the second largest in Hungary – as one of the most modern in Europe. He specifically thanked Sándor Csányi, whose agricultural investments form the Bonafarm Group, as without him the Mohács plant could not have been built.
Hungary needs more such projects, company groups, owners and well-built supplier systems, the Prime Minister stressed, adding that Bonafarm’s production network provides a secure living for many Hungarian farmers. “This is important for Hungarian agriculture, and emotionally it is also important for people like us, from the countryside. It is good to know that […] our own kind have a safe future, and it is good to see that the world of our own childhood has a future”, he said.
Mr. Orbán stressed that Bonafarm has decided to support Baranya County, and at last the time has come for the people of the county also to feel that the country and agriculture are improving.
He went on to say that the last thirty years have not been a glorious period for the Hungarian meat industry: the sector almost collapsed after the fall of communism, tens of thousands of jobs were lost, and “slowly but surely we were being pushed out of our own market”. It was incomprehensible, he said, why the Austrians were able to sell almost exclusively local food products in all their shops, while “we had to search through the entire supermarket display cabinet to find a Hungarian product”.
He stressed that for the Hungarian food industry to once again make the best possible progress, self-confidence had to be regained, because people who have no self-confidence can also be told what to buy and what to eat – which may even be “garbage”. To a large extent this self-confidence stems from the faith we have in the products that we produce ourselves, the Prime Minister said.
Hungary is an agricultural country and will remain so, Mr. Orbán stated. In the future agriculture must continue to be one of the national economy’s strategic sectors, he said, noting that all the conditions for this exist, as Hungary’s arable land can supply 15 million people with healthy food products.
At the opening ceremony Mr. Orbán also promised that there will be a new bridge across the Danube at Mohács, saying that the funds for the project are available, generated by the national economy. The problem is that at present there is no design plan. He also said that, after construction of a link between Debrecen and Békéscsaba, the Government plans the construction of a dual carriageway between Pécs and Szeged.